


Novitiate

by CountDraluka



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood and Violence, Character Study, Character Turned Into Vampire, Erotic Horror, F/F, Featuring butchered RE Lore, Inspired (loosely) by Vampire: The Masquerade V5, Non-Graphic Smut, Power Dynamics, She is a power bottom, Survival Horror, This maiden is no victim, Unreliable Narrator, Vampire Sex, Vampires, Villain Power Couple, Written prior to the game's release
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:48:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29355951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CountDraluka/pseuds/CountDraluka
Summary: "It must be said, however, that what truly sealed the maiden’s fate was not the testament she would pay to the coven. It was not the loss of blood nor the grotesque injuries she had acquired, even if they had left her more pliable than normal.  In fact, at the core of the matter, her demise had nothing to do with the series of unfortunate events that took place that special night. Nothing at all. This is because the sort of person that promptly escapes from a vampire’s lair is a completely different entity from the sort that, for one reason or another, lingers behind."An exploration of vampiric companionship.
Relationships: Lady Dimitrescu (Resident Evil)/Original Female Character(s), Lady Dimitrescu (Resident Evil)/Reader, Lady Dimitrescu/Unnamed Maiden (Resident Evil)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 215





	1. Initiation

_“Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.”_

_― Bram Stoker, Dracula_

* * *

_January 9 th, 1959._

It was with nothing short of exhaustion that the maiden pushed open the carved door and slowly stepped inside.

The room before her held a strange sense of intimacy – the small polished table, big enough for four, reminded her of lazy Sunday afternoons and ink-scented bookkeeping duties; the curtains were thick, claustrophobic, but the lamps carefully integrated into the historical décor cast a warm hue over the scene; the hundreds of wine bottles stored in cabinets all over were clearly expensive, yet neither their labelling nor their variety seemed to indicate they were intended for tasting by prospective buyers. A personal collection, perhaps, or just a space dedicated to honoring the family’s business without the overbearing formalities of the vineyard.

In any other circumstance the maiden would have thought of the room as comforting. Alas, it was certainly a shame that, seen as she was presently beaten, mortified, and haunted, there was no way she could perceive her environment with anything other than resentment. Instead, she harshly pulled out one of the chairs and sat upon it, hunching over the table. Her eyes fell closed, blocking out the disruptive commotion of her sense of self-preservation, and she tried to collect her bearings as best as she could.

The note, tucked in-between the cracks of the dungeon’s wall, had contained a very clear message.

_Escape._

Escape even if you must dig your way through the walls, or at the cost of chewing off your own leg. Escape, urgently and unseen. The maiden had taken the advice to heart for the better part of the forty-five minutes she had spent paralyzed after she awakened in that damp, rancid cell. She had taken it to heart as she pushed the half-decayed bodies aside to reach the pristine bolt-cutter, conveniently available for her use. As she crawled down a made-shift tunnel lined with lit candles, the supposed salvation route of the one that had been there before her, and made it safely to the other side. As she reached down into the crystal goblet abandoned in the dining room, untouched but for a lipstick mark, and produced from the blood the same ring whose melancholic jewel would unlock the door just to her left.

The maiden had taken the crumpled note to heart, indeed, until now - the very moment she sat down and looked at her bloodstained fingers. For, in that second of enlightenment, the note’s entire logic started to fall apart.

“ _Ha_ ”, the maiden breathed out, “so it is all pointless”.

Of course, it was mostly due to her unbridled arrogance that the maiden stumbled upon such a conclusion. The sequence of tasks she had accomplished to make it this far were too precise not to be premediated – detailed by someone who wished to see her attempt to make it from start to end, surely, and not by some overly-hopeful kidnap victim. The script of the vanity play became obvious when held against the beautiful penmanship of the directions.

Still, she had obeyed them, pliant and subservient. Had she been a little more naïve, the girl would have followed the instructions to their end, tripping over herself to escape from a nightmare impossible to awake from. A precious little fool she was – for had she ignorance in place of her cunningness, her last living moments would have been much more pleasant.

Despite her awareness, the maiden still considered heading back downstairs, to cry and knock at the front door, begging to be released until her miserable tears dried out and one of the mistresses came to end her suffering. A pitiful sight, she must have been, covered in cuts and bruises. Her feet had started to ache. Her throat begged for a drink. And, amidst all the loudness of her terror, the rip across her forearm started to ooze a murky color.

Sensible girls would have gotten on their knees and resorted to prayer.

_Fuck this_ , she thought instead.

Suddenly aware of her bodily dispositions, the maiden stood still for a long while, digging the grime out from her fingernails. Little by little she gathered her strength. She rested, alert, paying attention to the sounds outside the room.

Footsteps. Laughter. Soft fabric rustling against the floor. Screams. Silence.

Once the cycle finally broke its repetition, the maiden rose from her seat and began to scout the cupboards for a bottle opener. It was not long before she found one – tucked behind a polished skull, unceremoniously to the left of a cold metal key. She pocketed both, for safe measure, then went on to browse the wine stands with the self-indulgent languor of a woman lying on her deathbed.

The maiden knew nothing of wine – the dates and the grapes and fanfare held very little meaning to a girl who had never even tasted alcohol, much less the finer variants of it. Instead, guided by sight, one particular bottle caught her attention. She plucked it from the glass display. It was ornate, with the pretty silver flowers sprawling across the label. Flowers which, if her eyes had not tricked her, seemed appear everywhere in the castle, from the paneled walls to the sculptures and the vases. Unaware of its relevance, the maiden chose the bottle for its beauty.

After all, death reserved her the right to be superficial, did it not?

Somewhat mollified, she popped off the cork and took two greedy sips. The taste was sweet and heavy, fragrant as perfume applied on exposed skin, and ultimately coated her tongue unlike what she had expected. Sitting on the floor, she drank straight from the bottle, managing to stomach about a cup-and-a-half of the velvety liquid before queasiness got the best of her. The maiden clenched her teeth. Her skin prickled at the winter air. She drank again.

How she hated this place. Hated it with ardor, and hated the things it made her feel, too. That its beauty was intertwined with such horridness left her green with jealousy. And that there were people… _women_ … _things_ who were able to live in this kind of extravagance painted her heart with a troubling sense of yearning. As she shuddered, so did the castle walls. Winter had come knocking with a fervor that particular year, but despite it the world soon got warmer, and softer, and in her haze the maiden decided that the least she could do was to walk up to her doom on her own two feet, instead of being ripped towards it by ill fortune. She at least had a key – that would have to be enough.

In the hallway, the voices breathed down her neck. _We are watching you_ , they claimed, and the maiden attempted to find solace in the fact that loneliness had finally evaded her, even if for the wrong reasons. At the bottom of the stairs, she was greeted by one of the mistresses. She was, like the others, cloaked in black, and the blood smeared on her thin lips and blonde hair clotted at certain spots, unsettling as fresh lipstick applied over a layer of old makeup. The mistress smiled, wicked and eager, and her bell-like voice did nothing to conceal the violence of her words.

_Oh, but this one has given up! Come on, little bird, see if you can fly._

If the thick red liquid spilled over multiple points of the main room and the tossed furniture were of any indication, the maiden was likely the fifth person to be approached like this. How many had not even made it this far? Twenty? Thirty? Enough to keep the barrels in the cellar plentiful, at the very least, and more if one were to consider the castle denizen’s peculiar taste. The mistress lounged at her, pushing both of them to the stained marble floors, and as her neck was forcefully pried to the side, the maiden thought of how much she hated moths. Annoying, sticky little things, blindly seduced by an open flame. The maiden screamed and kicked, but the moth managed to sink her blunt teeth into her shoulder. Twice. Then into her neck, twice again. God, did it hurt.

When the mistress finally let go and stumbled backwards, cleaning her chin on the back of her hand, her clear eyes betrayed something akin to surprise.

_You drank it?_

The maiden was not polite enough to reply. The new lack of blood merely added to the feeling of inhibition creeping up with her senses. Inhibition which, mixed with the pumped-up adrenaline and the reality-questioning experiences she was currently swimming through, made for one hell of a cocktail. The sort of cocktail that turned a person bold, stupidly confident and, most important of all, nearly insane.

And so, as the maiden stepped aside and the mistress held out a conquering hand to stop her, the maiden bit down. Hard.

The mistress let out a shriek, rasp and high-pitched, and the tumultuous sound beckoned her two sisters to come out from the shadows. They tried to separate the maiden from her now vengeful grasp. It was not until the third slap that they managed to. The maiden’s hand instinctively clasped her neck, covering the wound that had quickly become damp and sore.

_She bit me! Did you see that?! The little brat bit me!_

_Calm down, Daniela! Calm down._

_Stop! We cannot kill it now – we must not interfere with the ceremony._

_If she lingers here one more moment, I’ll leave her as dry as…._

Their attention was perfectly split between arguing among themselves and backing the maiden against the double doors that opened to the dining room. The cloud of moths vibrated along to their movement, zooming past the maiden’s face, grazing and crawling over her skin in a way that was entirely unpleasant.

_She is meant to be dessert. Do not ruin her prematurely._

_Ha! Look at her – she can barely stand._

Their bickering might have sounded charming or even entertaining to somebody else, but the ringing noise in her ears and the black mist creeping up at the corners of the maiden’s vision left her too incapacitated to appreciate anything else other than the pain radiating from her injuries. The bite was fresh, yes, but she was sure it was already festering.

_This is the last one. Let us be done with it._

The tallest of the women, the brunette, pushed the maiden by the shoulders and through the doors, making her crash against the back of one of the dining chairs with a painful _thump_. With the windows left open for quite a long time, the bitter cold had made itself a nest in the dining room, to the point where snow had drifted in from outside and frozen over the half-dried puddle of blood by the exit to the courtyard. An exit that no doubt was locked, and for which she most certainly had the key.

The maiden’s eyes left the promise of freedom and returned to the three figures lingering past the threshold. Waiting for something - or someone. She did not lower her gaze when the mistresses stared her down, their eyes filling with bile as though the maiden were worth less than a pile of manure. Actually, no – as though the delay of her death and their subsequent pleasure from it were the greatest offense known to man – and yet they did nothing more than stare. There was no tangible barrier stopping them from marching past the doorframe and slicing the maiden’s throat with a well-oiled scythe. Nothing to prevent them from spilling the pitiful lifeline she depended upon right on top of the delicate embroidering of the tablecloth. It was, after all, already stained. And yet, for more than a minute, not a creature moved. Even the pestering insects quieted down as the maiden counted her breaths and held her head high.

The door to freedom was right there. The key was in her hand.

“Afraid?”, the maiden spit out, her syllables blurred at the edges from the blood and the wine.

She would not yield.

Not yet.

“Mother will not be pleased”, finally said the one with the proud nose, and closed the doors to the main hall.

Once again, the maiden was left alone.

Deprived of the light from the impressive chandelier, the dining room took on shades of green and silver, though the shadows prevailed all around her. The maiden sobbed. With the gravity of her condition finally making itself known, she collapsed onto the nearest chair. Her breaths had become strenuous. The air felt too tick to make it past her trachea. She heaved, and coughed, and heaved again. Her shaking hands slowly trailed to her neck, light and sharp, fingering the open wound to measure its depth, then lowered to her ribcage. She barely pressed against the swollen skin, covered in caked blood, but the sharp pain that seized the left side of her torso made it clear that at least two of the ribs were bruised, if not broken altogether. The maiden groaned in agony. Her vision had begun to take on a dangerous crimson shade that, when combined with the debilitating headache that soon settled into her skull, confused her. She attempted recollect her thoughts, but failed as soon as another wave of nausea crashed over her and forced her to retch into one of the crystal chalices. She did not dare to look at the shade of its contents.

The hours dragged on, though perhaps they were merely minutes disguised by her suffering, or treacherous seconds milking sadistic pleasure from her prolonged demise.

The maiden held the key so tightly that its shape imprinted into her palm. Cheek pressed against the tabletop, she could see the brass decorations on the door panels, a testament to both craftsmanship and time, though her mind abstracted her from them. Death awaited at the other side, she was sure, and the promise of rest seduced her more intensely with each mismatched heartbeat that ached inside her chest.

Still, she waited.

Waited for a moment too long, as it seems, for when the agony finally became unbearable the maiden realized she no longer had the strength to stand. Her entire body trembled, cold and defeated, and she sobbed aloud. A pitiful, broken sound.

As her soul crawled closer to the beyond, the maiden thought of her life, whatever little of it she had got to experience. A lifetime full of modest accomplishments, she bitterly concluded – a secondary education she had barely managed to afford; a handful of years serving as governess to a well-off family abroad, which had ultimately produced neither a substantial income nor any meaningful opportunities; and a bit of love, familial love given out of duty - filling yet unsatisfying.

Would they mourn her, her family?

Yes. Unfortunately. Her departure would leave a tear impossible to mend in the hearts of those who cared about her, however few or many they turned out to be.

Maybe she ought to have considered this when she decided to come to this wretched place.

Come to think of it, whatever had she sought out? A position as a ladies’ maid in a remote village, perhaps, or was it to sell handmade leather shoes, hopping door-to-door in hopes of surviving on commission? In truth, the maiden could not recall, and ultimately decided that her intentions no longer mattered.

Breathing became harder than before. She whimpered.

Whatever game she had been forced to play this evening had clearly been rigged from the start. From dungeon to courtyard there was no other path to be taken, no other doors she could ever possibly unlock, and thus she was left with only her stubbornness. First, a stubbornness to move forward, and now, a stubbornness to die.

The whispers of sweet voices had finally halted echoing through her mind, their intended destruction already fulfilled, and the silence they left was foreboding.

Her consciousness came and went. Because of this, she did not immediately realize she had company.

The maiden had envisioned Death before. She had fantasized about a skeletal figure, covered in darkness, marching forth atop a white mare while grasping a silver scythe with one hand. There had never been a reason to imagine it any other way. So, when Death arrived to meet the maiden and kiss her hand, she was surprised to find the Lady draped in white and silks – impossibly tall, imposing, and corporeal. She came in from the main hall, ducking through the doors with a practiced elegance, then stretched overindulgently once inside the dining room. She looked like a picture from one of those fashion magazines her old employer would purchase, the maiden thought, or the elegant matron from a ballet company ready to tear at her pupils, though even these comparisons felt too short a remark. Taking her time, the Lady fixed the sleeves of her dress, adjusted her necklace, and cracked her fingers, one by one, before looking at the dying girl collapsed in front of her.

“You know, it is generally considered impolite to leave your hostess waiting.”

The maiden involuntarily coughed, blood coating the inside of her mouth along with something coarser and more bitter. The Lady stared at her for a moment, unabashedly taking the sight in as though she were considering her options, then gracefully walked over to the other end of the table. On her way she selected one of the opened bottles and a clean glass. With flair, she poured out a drink until the cup was filled to about a finger’s width to the top. She finally sat across from the maiden, occupying the seat most surely reserved for taking.

“It has been a long night”, the Lady said after taking a delicate sip from her drink, “and I had prematurely crossed off this year’s harvest as completely ordinary. You see, by the twelfth girl we already had acquired enough raw material to supply the vineyard for another season, and by the twentieth there were more sacrifices than Mother Miranda could ever hope to demand from us”.

She explained things conversationally, working with the assumption that the maiden was completely aware of the meaning behind the night’s events – her capture, the escape, and the existence of vampirism alike – when the reality was that she could barely process the words beyond their intonation. The Lady took another sip.

“I was more than willing to wrap things up ahead of schedule, but my daughters begged for the diversion. I do try to be a good sire, of course, so I indulged them.”

With the glass now empty, the Lady ran a gloved finger over her scarlet lips, ensuring that no stains tainted the pristine execution of her makeup. Then, very slowly, she made her way to the maiden’s side. There was a moment when the Lady’s body tensed up, her posture straightening like that of a lioness on the cusp of attack, ready to jump on her prey and rip out its liver, but her form relaxed as she knelt instead. Even in this position she remained a head taller than the maiden would be, had she been standing rather than perishing, but something or another made it entirely obvious that the Lady was the sort of person who managed to tower over others regardless of height, pose, or power.

Without breaking eye contact, she made a show of removing the leather glove from her left hand by pulling it with her teeth, betraying no sight of sharp fangs or monstrous smile. With the accessory gone the maiden could see how the tips of her long fingers took on a darker hue than the paleness of her complexion, as if the blood inside her veins had stagnated for a long time. She flinched at the touch and instantly regretted it.

The Lady did not inflict pain – instead, she ran her hand through the maiden’s hair. Tenderly, one might dare say, though the maiden had neither the courage nor the cognitive capability at present to come to such a conclusion.

“My dear, you caught me quite by surprise.”

The Lady moved her fingers rhythmically, untying the knots she came across with the tips of her perfectly manicured nails. The texture of her skin, seen so up-close, revealed traces of long-lost humanity. Stretchmarks, veins, and even the finest of hairs had been immortalized into the Lady’s talc-like exterior - a juxtaposition that was uncanny at best and upsetting at worst, with magnificent lying somewhere in the middle.

“The other girls - regardless of whether they made it all the way to candidates, like yourself, or if they were rejected in the first round - last at most for an hour or two after receiving our kiss”, the Lady explained with a whisper. “In the rare event that they do make it to the other end of the night, they often come out of it too… _damaged_ to be of any use.”

Her ministrations shifted from brushing the maiden’s hair to tracing her wounds, employing a bizarre sense of familiarity. The maiden, now entirely used to the discomfort, was surprised to find the attention calming.

“True, sometimes we keep them, try to care for them as best as possible, but nowadays this charity comes at too high of cost for me to bother.”

Then, without notice, the Lady grasped the maiden by her chin.

“But you have been running around my castle for nearly four hours. You have evaded all our traps, engorged yourself with the best of my reserve, and bit my youngest like a flytrap. Then, as if this were not enough, you rejected the possibility of a much more merciful end and delayed our meeting until the sun was nearly out, almost as if you knew the rites that bound this household.”

Had the Lady’s words simply been transcribed, an uninformed reader would have imagined her furious. So let it be noted, for posteriority, that _aroused_ would have been a more accurate description, though _impressed_ would also suffice.

“Even in your recklessness, there was strategy. An unconscious will to survive. You are… Perfect.”

With her thumb the Lady wiped out the dried blood from the maiden’s bottom lip. Her tone had not changed – she talked with the warmness of a goddess trying to persuade you to confess your greatest sins.

“You are scared, are you not? _Yes, yes, yes_. I can see – terrified, even. That much is clear. Well, I would say that, for your sake, you’d better be.”

_Had the winter always been so warm_ , the maiden wondered.

“And though you can barely remain awake, ever so often your eyelids flutter open, and your pretty little eyes find mine, and then you can’t look away. Like now… There’s repulsion in your gaze, but there is love, too. Hatred and passion mingling to form a wonderful bouquet.”

A sense of shame bubbled inside of her. A mortifying realization that, even as prey, she was still subject to being known. The thought of averting her golden gaze did cross the maiden’s mind, but before she could act on it, the Lady pulled her in, closer than before.

“Look at me”, she demanded, now less than a non-existent breath away.

The maiden obliged.

“I shall give you a choice, dearest”, she announced. “You may decide to sleep now – in which case I will be gentle, despite of my personal frustrations. I will tuck you into the warmest, most comforting darkness there ever was, and hand you over to the other side swiftly and charmingly. It will love you, care for you, and protect you.”

Her words, murmured nearly to the maiden’s skin, had quickly gotten rid of any resistance or abhorrence, leaving in their wake something akin to newborn adoration. In their imbalance there was a sense of equality, small but important.

“Or you may brave another day more, wide awake, and in due time endure one of the worst tortures this world has to offer. In fact, I shall see to it myself. Pleasure will soon turn to pain, and once it begins, nobody will be able to save you from it. Not one my daughters, or me, or even Mother Miranda will be able to stop it. Do you understand?”

“I do”, the maiden responded.

Never had a mortal sounded so sure of something.

“Good. However, if you do manage to come out unscathed – if you rise under the moonlight as the person who you have always hoped to become, and if the grief of such a transformation does not drive you to stare at the sunrise, then you shall be welcomed as an equal. _Blood of our blood_.”

Perhaps it had not been the Lady’s intention, but in the fine print of her words it was possible to reveal a favoritism, albeit unreliable, with respect of what two options she presently offered. The smile was heavenly.

“This castle will become your home, and you will serve it - it and its ancestral family - dutifully and eternally.”

It was, as far as cult initiations go, a rather standard demand. The maiden had been no stranger to the myriad of congregations that required loyalty in exchange for community, though this was the first time that the promise had sounded enticing.

It must be said, however, that what truly sealed the maiden’s fate was not the testament she would pay to the coven. It was not the loss of blood or the grotesque injuries she had acquired, even if they had left her more pliable than normal. Nor was it the trauma stemming from witnessing the horrors locked away in the castle’s dungeons. It was not sickness from the scent of decay clogging to her pores, or a byproduct of ingesting too much alcohol on an empty stomach, or fear messing with her head.

In fact, at the core of the matter, her demise had nothing to do with the series of unfortunate events that took place that special night.

Nothing at all. 

This is because the sort of person that promptly escapes from a vampire’s lair is a completely different entity from the sort that, for one reason or another, lingers behind.

“Survive the day, fulfill my duty- “

As she spoke, the maiden coughed, and the violent spasm was for the first time softened by the touch of a caring hand upon her sternum. She licked her lips before continuing.

“- these are all things I can manage with my hands tied behind my back. But I’ve –“

The maiden coughed again.

“- I’ve been alone a long time – alone in the worst sense there is. And, frankly, _I’m sick of it_.”

Bold, she took the Lady’s hand. Their fingers entwined.

“So, after all this loneliness, what then?”

In the end, what sealed the maiden’s fate was a simple thing. Simple as the fact that, when the Lady held her closer and placed her lips upon her, the maiden kissed her back. Earnestly and madly, promptly forgetting about all the suffering she might have endured had she been just another maiden, and not the one. They embraced, and the maiden gave what she had, and the Lady took what she was owed. By the end of it a kiss had become a carnal sin; death, a friend; and love something as simple as throwing your whole life away for someone you just met.

“And then you will be mine. You shall be mine, and I will be yours, and you and I will be one for ever.”

Of all the places to fall, she considered, this was probably among the best of them. The damask upholstery of the chair felt oh-so-soft when she threw her head back against it. The breeze entering through the open windows had a refreshing sting to it. And, of course, the lifting of her hems and the touch under her skirt was more than enough to quench any doubts. She leaned into the consummation, the wicked, and the divine. 

_Lost_ \- so lost in her, she was. The maiden never even noticed the bite.

“Allow me to propose a toast.”

Rather than raise a glass, the Lady removed her other glove. From the fingertips of her discolored hand talons sprung up. Their sharp edges were made of bone coated in a metallic substance, giving them a blade-like finish. She slid that of her index finger over the skin of her own wrist, piercing it easily, and from the cut thick, dark _vitae_ gradually poured out. Its scent was both sickening and inviting.

“To your death, dearest. May it be gentle as you take your vows.”

It was with nothing short of delight that the maiden drank from her lady, and thus consecrated herself as a novice to the order and as a bride to the night.

Binding them, for better or for worse, until the end of times.

* * *

_[REDACTED], 2022._

Ethan Winters knew better than to waste time looking at the paintings hung about the wretched place.

He _knew_ better.

However, as fate would have it, he was not left with much else to do – his dislocated kneecap made sure that moving forward was an impossibility for the time being and, as far as he could tell, they had not yet figured out that this was where he was hiding. Here he was temporarily safe.

_So be it_ , he thought, and skeptically eyed the family portraits lining the hall.

The way they were arranged could serve as an introduction to the Fine Arts trends of the past six hundred years, give or take. There were seventeen canvases in total. None less than two meters tall, one meter wide, and all secured by opulent frames. The gallery was as extravagant as the rest of the furniture. And yet, a moment of appreciation made it clear that the paintings’ subjects were not only similar in nature – that they were, in all aspects, the same people.

The Dimitrescu progeny were most often depicted individually. Less frequently, in pairs, and more rarely than that, in trios. The way they were represented certainly confused Ethan, who had only ever thought of them as monsters to be killed or capturers of his daughter, and almost always as a set. Never before had he considered the possibility that they remained real people – each with their favorite dress, favorite color, favorite pose. There was even a white cat that seemed to pop up from artwork to artwork, sitting by the blonde’s feet or cradled in her arms, but the implications of such a recurrence made him brush thoughts of pets aside.

Ethan soon realized, however, that out of the four women he only recognized three.

The fourth one, a stranger, had been immortalized under a different pretense than her sisters, though it was hard to pinpoint exactly where the difference lay. Perhaps the color palette was warmer, or the lines more defined, or even the texture of the brushstrokes a bit more intense. Whatever it was, Ethan could not figure it out. The question bothered him for the next hour or so, as he slowly and painfully made his way down to the main wing, shooting his way past the ladies’ sick idea of home security. It was not until he ended up in the drawing room that the answer made itself visible.

And what an obvious answer it was.

As Ethan stared at the enormous family portrait that took up the better part of the east wall, he could not help but feel stupid. This one showed the three women, all adorned in the finest jewelry and attire there was, gathered around a fourth, who was sat upon a chair. Her impressive height and royal posture betrayed her title as Lady of the Castle, though Ethan had already had the displeasure of her acquaintance to be able to gawk in awe. Immediately to the right of the Lady stood the stranger, with her hand gracefully placed upon the matriarch’s shoulder. Her touch was arranged in a way that made it all painfully clear.

The strange maiden set her glossy gaze upon Ethan.

Its intensity made him doubt, for the first time, whether he would make it out alive.

* * *

_“You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me.”_

_― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the few of you familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade, here is a little quote for your enjoyment - "Those who claim to have no fear have never met a Toreador who has mastered the discipline of Vicissitude".  
> Thank you for reading!


	2. Ascension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was aggravating, the maiden noted to herself, to have to lower her head after having endured so much. The experience of her transformation had left her on the edge between reason and emotion. One side rightfully claimed that nothing had been altered - that the castle halls held the same horrors tonight as they did when she had last wandered around them, hunting her just as before – while the other side, gradually draining strength from its companion, made a much bolder claim. 
> 
> She had changed. 
> 
> Now, in more ways than one, she was like them.

_“She is like a cat in the dark_

_And then she is to darkness_

_She rules her life like a fine skylark_

_And when the sky is starless”_

_\- Rhiannon, Fleetwood Mac_

* * *

_January 17 th, 1959._

The maiden would sleep, and then she would wake. She would sleep again. Then she would wake.

Wake. Sleep. Wake.

Sleep. Wake. Sleep.

On and on and on again. 

Whatever time existed in-between the two activities was filled with suffering. Raw and ardent suffering, coursing down her veins as if she had been injected with molten gold, or as agonizing as having one’s neurological system plugged directly into an electrical socket. In waking her body betrayed her, unwinding and remaking itself right before her eyes, and in her sleep she dreamt she was awake.

A thick cloud of smoke had settled over her consciousness, and past the rare gaps which appeared the maiden would make out snippets of reality. Sometimes she could hear herself screaming, sounding as though her lungs were being ripped out, or even feel her vocal cords shredding themselves from the strain. Other times she would see herself, distant as though she were peeping through a keyhole. She would be laying atop a bed too luxurious to be her own, sickly skin glistening with tears and sweat to the point where her cream nightgown had become transparent at certain places, her wild hair sticking to her face.

She would see other people, too, even if she could not decipher who they were. They would come in and out of the room, lingering for imperceptible intervals of time. She would feel a cold cloth being scrubbed over her collarbones, or the bristles of a hairbrush against her scalp. The air would be warm, and sometimes cold, or simply lukewarm.

There was a moment when the maiden caught a glimpse at the restraints bound to her wrists and legs. She saw how violently she struggled against them, fervently attempting to claw at her own abdomen. She hollered and they eventually ripped. The scene was terrifying – it left her with the sour impression that her body was now inhabited by an untamed beast. A gnarling, foaming creature at the brink of frenzied destruction. And yet, perhaps most unsettling of all, the maiden saw herself in every picture of suffering and thrashing of limbs.

It would have been easier if she could think it was somebody else. But no.

It was her. She was in pain.

 _She was dying._

And then she’d sleep again.

* * *

It was after the seventh sleep, or perhaps the eighth – she had really lost count by that point – that the maiden awoke for the first time. She rose as if she had been jolted from a nightmare, a horrendous nightmare, and enveloped herself in the protection of her own arms the moment she sat upright in the goose feather bed. She tried to gasp for air but panicked. She could not remember how to breathe.

She tried again.

Her lungs emitted a hollow hiss, refusing to fill, and she instantly brought her hands to her neck, afraid she was chocking. She tried again, forcing her stomach to expand, and it was only when the maiden took conscious control over her diaphragm that she was able to inhale profoundly. She then exhaled. Afraid she had already forgotten how, she inhaled again, then another time. And then the strangeness of her quarters distracted her for a few seconds, which subsequently turned into minutes as she ran her hands over the silk sheets and watched the dancing flames in the fireplace, making her promptly forget once more.

Without breath nor heartbeat, the maiden stood completely still. Perplexed, she basked in the silence of her body for a long time. How empty she felt. Like somebody had carved out a piece of her soul and chucked it to the depths of the ocean, or fed it in sacrifice as an appeal to a capricious god. Whatever she had endured slowly evaporated from her system, waning straight from her bones, and a harrowing sense of dread infected her hollowed insides.

Something like… _hunger_.

The bedroom door gently opened, and a young servant walked inside.

One of the local girls, by the looks of her complexion, and not a year older than twenty. She carried a pitcher of water in her arms and an enticing blush upon her cheeks.

“Ma’am”, the servant screeched, “You’re awake!”.

The maiden stared at the servant as though she were a Martian descended upon the earth – confusing and unknown. A bit put-off by the lack of response, the servant clumsily bowed, then scurried across the room and around the bed to refill the basin atop the dresser. With this movement the maiden was immediately struck by her scent. Musky, raw, and _alive_.

The world suddenly made sense again.

With her back turned to the bed, the servant did not realize that the maiden had stood up until she was against her, one hand compressing the arm holding the pitcher while the other was painfully inserted through her tight braid, fingers digging straight into her scalp. She screamed in pain, honest, and the maiden became pure instinct.

She sank her teeth into the patch of skin left bare by the high-collared uniform, biting through muscle and cartilage all the way to the trachea. The servant made a gurgling sound, but she paid it no mind. She drank. Oh, how she drank. The maiden took her blood in mouthfuls at a time, not caring about the way the red dripped onto the floor and down the front of her nightgown – only that she could swallow it.

She wanted some more.

Once the artery started to run dry, she switched to the other side, then further down to the girl’s thigh when that too became unsatisfying. By the end of the act both her and the servant had fallen to the ground, the porcelain pitcher shattered next to them, and the maiden was running her hands over the dead girl’s flesh to try and coax some more blood from where it had stagnated. Very quickly her skin went cold.

Straddling the cadaver, she voraciously breathed in, and the scent of death seemed to open her appetite some more. Deprived of other options, the maiden licked her fingers clean.

It ought to have disturbed her, to bring about such destruction. After all, the servant had been close to a child, one taken by the dream of leading a better life, and possibly not much different from herself. In another lifetime they might have worked together – the servant polishing the mistresses’ shoes while the maiden embroidered their evening wear. Even shared a room in the maid’s quarters, perhaps, in which case they would have completed the night’s prayers in unison before gossiping about why Helena never came back downstairs, or why Paula’s things ended up in a box among the coals. The dead girl before her might even had been the one to write to her parents about the unfortunate news of her passing, had life turned out just a tiny bit differently.

But the servant had called her _“Ma’am”_ , and the woman she saw reflected in the mirror on the other side of the room bore no resemblance to a lady’s maid or a shoe-seller, nor did she look like the type who once cared for the nobility’s children. No – though a historical account might argue to the contrary, the maiden had been born here. She had always belonged to this land, to this castle, and even if her blood did not run blue it had most certainly always flown this thick. This was who she was meant to be.

Or, rather, who she had always been.

The maiden stood from the ground just as the door opened again. She turned towards it, half-expecting another servant to wander in, but instead was met with one of the sisters – the one who had closed the dining room doors, with the sharp nose and the thin lips. She looked much different from the last time the maiden had seen her. Stripped of the ceremonial attire and dark veils she fitted in a lot more seamlessly with the castle atmosphere. Her appearance was timeless - the cut of her cerulean gown lied somewhere between Greco-Roman and Art Nouveau, and her sleek hair was neatly pinned to frame her face – yet the refinement did not compromise the dangerous air she carried about herself. A single moth flapped its wings over her head. The sister looked at the maiden, then at the body on the ground, then back at the maiden.

“How do you feel?”, she very calmly inquired.

The maiden mused over the question for a little while. She felt a lot of things, truth be told – every emotion from despair to anger bubbled under the thin layer of her death shroud, corrosive as acid poured on pure metal, but one feeling stood out from the others, pulsating as her heart no longer did.

“Strong”, the maiden replied.

Her coherent answer made the sister nod curtly. She approached, cautious, and held the maiden by the shoulders. Her eyes travelled all over the maiden’s body, taking in the details with meticulous care, from the malleability of her skin to the stiffness of her muscles. She had the maiden follow the movements of her raised finger from side to side, up and down, and watched her pupils dilate and contract when she brought one of the lit candles closer to the maiden’s face. The heat of the flame felt oddly uncomfortable. After, and with the objectivity of a physician, she examined the maiden from head to toe. Tested the flexibility of her joints, the strength of her grip, the sensibility of her ears.

Unacquainted with the practice, the maiden allowed it to happen.

She never gave any notice before acting. The sister unceremoniously grabbed the maiden by the chin and stuck two fingers into her mouth, feeling around her teeth in a profanely clinical way, then used her digits to press down her tongue so that she could check the back of her throat.

When the maiden thought she would finally restore her personal space, the sister pushed her fingers further back. She gagged. Luckily, her stomach managed to hold on to whatever she had just ingested, but the feeling was unpleasant, nonetheless. The reaction seemed to satisfy the sister, given how she soon stepped back and cleaned the saliva off her hands with an embroidered handkerchief.

“Wha – _augh_ \- was that?”, the maiden alarmingly inquired, fighting against the reflux.

Rather than afford her an answer, the sister swung an open hand at her direction, indicating every intention to slap her across the face.

_No._

The maiden managed to grab her wrist in the split-second before the hit. They stared at one another for a beat. Surprising, that was. The sister offered her a strange smile.

“Impressive”, she admitted, “and we were already sure of the worst, too.”

Pain had consumed her for over a week, came the crushing realization, when she had only promised it a night.

It was frustrating how her body no longer provided her with the adrenaline fitted for such a situation. Drip by drip the abnormalities agglomerated into something she did not feel able to digest, hence she sought some form of stability - even in the hands of someone who had tried to slit her throat open but a few days prior.

Because of it, the maiden did not try to run away.

“You may consider me the triage nurse”, the sister nonchalantly informed. “I was asked to check up on you and, depending on your state, dispose of your remains. To my chagrin, the latter does not seem to be necessary.”

There was patience in her voice, though a part of herself she did not care much to hide her accentuated delight in the confusion settling over the maiden’s mind. The way her posture had changed – from the carefree joy of indulging in a sanguinary game to the somber duty of picking out the rotten apples from a basket – told the maiden more than one would imagine.

This was the first-born daughter.

Punctuating her sentence, the sister cast an indifferent look to the dried-out cadaver at her feet. 

“We should have sent someone a bit fuller. That was quite thoughtless of us, but you seem to have managed alright.”

Instinctively the maiden looked down at herself – at the streak of blood dripping down her chest, staining the front of her nightgown. Only under the candlelight did she realize how thin the material truly was, near translucent, and how eagerly the pale white drank the spilt crimson. She felt terribly exposed, dressed like this.

The realization that she did not feel any genuine regret for murdering the poor servant girl only came to bother the maiden later. Much, much, much later. In fact, her sense of morality took so long to strike that, by the time it finally showed up, she laughed it out the front door and went to pour herself another glass.

_Egocentrism is a devious thing._

Sensing that the maiden had gotten lost in her thoughts, the sister pulled her by the wrist.

“Come. Mother awaits us.”

The maiden at last resisted. She dug the heels of her bare feet into the ground, the tension of her soles against the wood floor producing an unpleasant squeak.

“ _Wait_ – can’t you at least explain what the hell is going on?”

She did not reply straight away. When she did, her words carried a hint of annoyance, similar to the muted agony of having to deal with a petulant child at the brink of a temper tantrum.

“There is nothing I can say that you have not figured out by yourself already. And the rest… Well, _little bird_ , it is not my place to tell”, the sister said. Her other hand wrapped around the maiden’s wrist, her touch a lot less forgiving this time around. “I really shan’t keep you from her any longer. Follow me, or I’ll drag you downstairs myself.”

It was aggravating, the maiden noted to herself, to have to lower her head after having endured so much. The experience of her… _transformation_ had left her on the edge between reason and emotion. One side rightfully claimed that nothing had been altered – that the castle halls held the same horrors tonight as they did when she had last wandered around them, hunting her same as before – while the other side, gradually draining strength from its companion, made a much bolder claim.

She had changed.

Now, in more ways than one, she was like them.

The thought disturbed the maiden, deeply, until it no longer did.

She followed behind the sister like the well-behaved girl she frequently pretended to be.

The castle’s floorplan remained a mystery, but the walk proved a brief one. She was led down what she assumed to be the main wing, then the two of them completed only a couple of right turns before reaching a mahogany set of doors. The sister made a motion for her to wait as she pressed her ear against the wood.

“She is on the phone”, she announced, “ _be quiet"_.

It must come as no surprise that, when the maiden stepped into the master bedroom, the third and last thing she noticed was the beautiful interior design. Noticed that the entire room had been dipped in warm tones: luxurious gold, lavish pinks, and elegant florals; that the enormous canopy bed, strangely inviting, carried eight feather pillows; that bookshelves lined up the walls more often than wardrobes, taking up the space from floor to ceiling, and that papers piled up on the desk and two nightstands.

The second thing the maiden noticed were the two other sisters – one curled up on the armchair, flipping mindlessly through a novel, and the other stretched on her side atop the lovers’ seat, teasingly wiggling a bloodied eyeball in front of the kitten laying on the floor. The animal’s red-stained paws kicked up in the air, trying to grab it. They too had exchanged their ceremonial attire for something a bit more elegant and individualistic. _Were they fond of georgette or had the dresses been picked out for them,_ she wondered _._ Their eyes glimmered with interest as the maiden walked in, expectation in the air, yet they remained silent.

Of course, the first thing the maiden noticed as she walked into the bedroom was the woman sitting at the vanity. Her back had been turned to the door, offering a clear view of how pristinely her raven hair curled at the nape of her neck – curls which the Lady absentmindedly fondled as she spoke to whoever was on the other side of the line. The dark velvet suited her as finely as the silky whites.

“Yes, of course – I’ll be sure to speak to the Beneviento about it.”

Maybe it was the way she drawled certain syllables, or how she almost always used her chest to bring intonation to her words, but something in the way she talked made the maiden realize that she had never been shot. How was it then, the maiden questioned herself, that she could perfectly describe the feeling of a bullet piercing through muscle and bone? Because she could swear she had felt it, at that moment – a perfect shot taken straight through her _unbeating_ heart.

Like missing a step when running down the stairs.

Or a lightning strike.

“Mother Miranda, I…”

_Oh, just say love, for crying out loud._

Just as their gazes crossed through the reflection, their reactions ended up as mirrors of one another’s. As the maiden covered her mouth, the Lady lost her words; one walked forward while the other moved her chair back; and, less perceptively, a young vampire thought of kneeling down as her sire stood up to greet her.

“I will meet you there”, the Lady harshly concluded, and hung up the phone with a little too much force.

Her golden eyes all but devoured the maiden. She drank her in as greedily as an oasis of water in a barren desert – from the softness of her lips to the sharpness of her wit, the hair matted of sweat to the flaking blood at the junction of her collarbone, then indulgently down to where the liquid had trickled over her breasts, stomach, and hips. It was most certainly an invasive look, superior only in etiquette from her sticking a tongue into her right earlobe and licking a whirling path to the inside of her left knee, and short on perhaps a bit more satisfaction, were she to do the exact same thing with a few strategic pauses – and bites - added to the act. Her expression might as well have pinned the maiden up against the wall.

Such a visceral reaction was not without its downfalls, however. The scent of old death stuck firmly to the embroidered carpet, for one, and there was something discomforting about the fact that the maiden knew the Lady’s name only from having read it somewhere, on an innocuous piece of paper, and not from having been told it from the madam herself. She ached for the information to be formally delivered – to be able to say her name, to call her in all her glorious letters which had lived solely in the maiden’s mind up to that point.

Yet, despite the Lady’s name seeming too confidential to be spoken aloud, she had been the leading actress in the maiden’s last moments alive. Her voice, her touch, her open mouth. Beauty and charm perfectly paired with something wicked and sharp. _Bewitching,_ the maiden faltered, having quickly become quite the poet. Her presence had overtaken the maiden completely, sewing itself to the fissures of her existence in such a way intricate that, were the thread ripped and unwound, the only possible outcome would be an atrocious collapse. A feeling of dread overtook the maiden.

 _They were strangers. They were strangers,_ the maiden repeated _, no matter what bizarre events had led her to this very place. They were strangers, and they killed people, and she was so afraid that…_

The Lady already had her.

What else could she possibly want – _what sort of connection could they have_ – now that the chase was over?

But how secure the maiden felt, held together by all these precise stitches.

_"There you are.”_

There was, to the surprise of most present to witness it, genuine relief in her temperate tone. With only a few strides the Lady closed the gap between them, and she took no time in cupping the maiden’s cheeks with her gloved hands, leaning down at the hip so that the tips of their noses nearly touched. She inhaled, deeply, sucking the air through teeth and nostril. Smelling not the damp blood over her skin, the maiden realized, but her own scent. 

“Oh, how I longed to see you. I’ll let you know you had me rather worried, dearest, by resisting as long as you did”, the Lady spoke, her lips curling up to something that could pass as a gratified smile. Her left hand slid down from the maiden’s face to rest on her shoulder, her fingers sprawling open to that she could caress where the bloodstain met the neckline with the pad of her thumb, and both their eyes followed the movement. “Speaking of which – are you well? How do you feel?”

Good question – one whose answer the maiden had involuntarily wiped from her mind sometime between the fourth and fifth time she felt like her body had been lit aflame, which was right after her she had thought her liver had been ripped out and fed to the wolves. Or was it before?

“Shaken, but no true harm done.”

In twenty years or so, morally corrupt scientists would argue the exact opposite – that what the maiden had gone through was perhaps one of the greatest forms of harm a human body could endure, only marginally better from trying to swim in molten lava. Then again, the same scientists would later try to stuff said harm into a tin and sell it to the masses, so credibility begged their opinion to be taken with a grain of salt.

Though trustful of her daughter’s examination, the Lady still raised an eyebrow.

“I see I must teach you how to lie, as well as how to bite properly. Although…”

She grabbed the maiden by the waist and slightly extended her arms, making use of the small distance and shift in perspective to examine her form, pursed lips resemblant to those of a museum curator walking through an art exhibition. She was not at all methodical – instead, a strange melancholy appeared to glaze over her expression.

“Forget that – it rather suits you, this abandon. And the red. _Yes, I shall have you in scarlet_.”

Growing quite accustomed to being on the receiving end of such attention, the maiden allowed herself to stare, too – at the obvious details, to which the maiden had never dared to think herself immune, but also those that had gone unnoticed, like small beauty mark right above the Lady’s eyebrow, and the one scar closer to her chin.

“Silk, one would hope”, the maiden could not stop herself from commenting. She partially expected to be scolded every time her restraint slipped - her chirps as child had often forced her under the ruler - but the Lady only responded with delight coated in something dark and syrupy.

“That, or nothing at all”, she declared, and in the background of the scene, the three sisters shared a look of skepticism. This sort of encounter might not be a common occurrence in the household, after all. The Lady paid them no mind, however, shaking off that odd expression with grace.

“But here I am babbling when there are so many unpleasantries to get through. Listen carefully, now, pet.”

At once, the maiden locked in her attention.

“Do you wish to leave?”

The question was posed without any embedded expectations. The only hint of a threat detected was a byproduct of the maiden’s own defense mechanism.

“Never”, she almost choked out and, to her absolute horror, meant every bit of it.

“ _Good_. Good. You may not, for the record, though that does make matters less complicated. And are you afraid?”

Stumped for a quick reply, the maiden philosophized aloud.

“Fear? Yes, I would say. But… Not afraid of you, or of them, nor of this castle”, she slowly explained. After she finished, there was a moment of quiet consideration before the Lady brought her closer once more, holding her by the waist as she carefully maneuvered the angle of their bodies. She knelt, straightening out her posture so that the maiden still had to look up to her, even if they were now at the same level.

“Of yourself, then, I would assume.”

She did not reply. Bemused, the Lady reached up to brush the maiden’s bottom lip with the tip of her thumb.

“That is the way of things, I am sorry to say. But, if it serves as consolation…”, the Lady whispered, so very gentle, and kissed her.

What a terrible tragedy it was that, as before, the maiden immediately gave in. As soon as the softness of the Lady’s lips had satisfied her, the maiden parted hers and offered up her tongue, and a broken sound escaped her throat when the sacrifice was gladly received. Her recollections from the last time were blurry, so the maiden did her best to commit it all to memory, now – the taste of the wine she just drank, her freshly-applied perfume, and even what the clasp of her diamond necklace felt like underneath her fingers when the maiden wrapped her arm around her neck.

When she eventually began to pull away, the maiden went as far as stealing a last peck before finally letting go. The room felt weirdly cold immediately after. The Lady, too, seemed affected by the gesture, fixing her gloves exceedingly harshly when she realized that her daughters had watched the interaction with an unreadable expression.

The maiden did not judge them for their reaction – after all, meeting the stepmother is always an uneasy affair.

“Girls, see that she has a chance to settle down”, she announced, turning back to the mirror to adjust her hat. “The servants are aware of the addition to our household, so they should have something prepared if anyone becomes peckish. And _avoid_ killing any more of them, please – good help is incredibly hard to find these days.”

“Where should we keep her?”, asked the sister with the cat, who had eaten the eyeball some time since. “Not _keep_ – I mean, what room is she staying in?”

“Here, _you silly thing_ ”, the Lady lilted as if it were the most obvious fact. The other sister lifted her eyes from her book to frown.

Then, turning to the maiden, the Lady posed as an afterthought: “You will stay with me, won’t you?”

_Those who kneel ought to pray, her parents had taught her._

The maiden nodded.

“Well, that accounts for all the pressing concerns. My darlings, I really must take my leave, lest Mother Miranda decide to come for my head”, the Lady said as she reached out for the dark veil hung over the back of the vanity chair. She placed the thick, ornate fabric over her hat, fixing it to the accessory with two silver pins on either side, but did not cover her face just yet. The oldest sister, still by the door, crossed her arms.

“Have you told her, mother, about your new… Our new guest?”

Involuntarily, the maiden scrunched her nose at the word. Through the reflection the Lady smiled out of the corner of her mouth. Nevertheless, her voice betrayed a healthy dose of preoccupation when she spoke right after.

“No, I have not. I believe that such important topics are better broached face to face, which is how I intend to approach this.”

“Let me accompany you, then, or at the very least ask Heisenberg to keep an ear out for the conversation”, the sister responded, and the other two appeared to share in her concern – and so did the maiden, soon after she began to piece the snippets of information together.

“You do recognize that I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself”, the Lady dismissed, rolling her eyes at the mere suggestion of needing reinforcement to deal with Mother Miranda. No – that would be ridiculous. She was, after all, her favorite. She did her bidding, delivered the results, and served the coven well. Her record was nothing but perfect.

She did not need Mother Miranda’s permission for companionship.

_Absolutely not._

The Lady looked at the clock on the wall.

Turns out she did not have the time to second-guess her judgements. 

“I really must go, now. _Ta ta_ , darlings, and do not forget to be good.”

Just as the Lady turned around on her heels to leave, however, the maiden reached out to her.

_“Just one more thing.”_

There were a lot of things she wanted to say, the maiden immediately realized. She had questions, unanswered, quite a few of which she could not even place into words to be able to externalize. Doubts. Insecurities. Fear. There was pain, of course, and anger, all of it manifesting into a rather long string of curses she wished she could shout at the sky. And there were wants, too, wants that had been festering inside her soul for perhaps as long as she had lived.

Should she address them, here and now, or had their significance been erased from the story?

“Your name – you never told me.”

“My name?”, the Lady inquired in mirth. “Indeed… I have always thought names too much of a personal thing to simply give away unprompted.”

She brought the veil over the front of her hat, shrouding herself from the light.

“Alcina, dear. _Alcina_.”

And left.

The maiden let out the breath she had been holding for a long time.

She heard the cat meow.

“ _Why the fuck”_ , the youngest sister began, _“was she all over you like that?”_

* * *

Boredom.

The maiden very quickly learned that the greatest enemy to the undead was boredom.

It was the reason why crates upon crates of books and records and distractions were delivered to the castle every week, without fault, and why these items were as feverishly consumed as the spinal fluid of a healthy virgin girl. Both were entertaining, for a bit, but not exactly satiating – something the maiden had concluded by herself in the four and half hours she had spent in the company of the three sisters, waiting for the Lady – _Alcina_ – to return.

They had gotten her to talk about the world outside – how mortals had been faring these last few decades. Not having much else to go off from, the maiden told them about her time as the governess to a pathologist’s children, skillfully glossing over the details of her dismissal. They listened, intent, though beneath their newfound interest in her, they clearly struggled with the idea of sharing the dinner table with what was meant to be yesterday’s dessert.

It was uncertain whether she had obtained seniority by default or if they were playing it safe for the moment.

Eventually, however, they got tired of her retellings, and of themselves. Each ended up flying off to do their own thing, leaving the maiden to stare at the ceiling. Which she did, for a while, because entering a near-catatonic state felt better than being too tired to do anything about the boredom.

She barely noticed when a handful of servants wandered into the room to make preparations for the mistress’ evening rituals. They had brought over a dozen flower bouquets – black roses wrapped in ribbons – and armfuls of other trinkets, along with a tray of fresh wine. All seven of them stopped at the door when the first to walk in noticed that the maiden was inside.

“Ma’am?”, inquired their leader, doing her best to prevent her shaking arms from dropping the ceramic vase she carried. The maiden felt hungry, now, but she kept herself in check.

Good help was hard to find, after all.

“Come on in”, she said, sitting up on the sofa. The servants promptly obeyed the command, zipping around the furniture to complete their tasks as swiftly and discreetly as possible. They swapped out the flowers for the fresh ones, collected the used glasses, and threw away the opened bottles. Two of the girls went into the bathroom, heads bowed, and from the sound of water running the maiden correctly deduced they were filling up the bath. One set out a fresh pack of cigarettes on the coffee table. None had even dared to look at her except for the only one that spoke.

“The coach has sent word they are on their way back, ma’am”, the servant very timidly informed, “It should be enough time for you to freshen up - if you wish to”.

The maiden mused over the implication for a moment. She looked at the bed, then down at herself, then back at the bed. She had interpreted her vows as the ones she would take to the coven, sealed in her own blood, but it was evident that, in her attempt to protect herself from disappointment, the maiden had dismissed the most common usage of the term.

Greater strangers had done more, after all.

She asked herself if it would be too soon. The answer was a unanimous no.

“Just bring me a robe, please.”

The servant complied, silently, and soon enough left to her own devices.

As crude as it sounded, the maiden had finally found an exciting prospect, and so she did what she could to facilitate the best-case scenario. Holy judgment had long lost its meaning, anyways. She undressed, letting the pale nightgown pool at her feet, and wrapped herself in the dark-green robe instead. She then walked over to the vanity. Her gaze fell on her reflection.

Even with the lingering effects of the transformation, she had never looked better.

The maiden broke from her trance like Narcissus being yanked away from the lake. Dazzled, she sat down on the plush chair, crossing her legs and sinking into its surface. The rotary dial phone came into focus in her vision.

Nobody who had loved her before owned a landline.

But she knew the contact of her father’s old employer, did she not?

Her hands reached out to phone. 

_2… 0… 1…_

If she managed to get the international code right, then the operator might be able to connect her to a long-distance call.

And then …

The maiden immediately stopped.

She asked herself what the hell she was doing. Upon determining that it would have been a mistake regardless of whether anyone cared, she hung up.

Of one thing she was sure - she was better off playing the blushing bride than the escape artist.

In an attempt to quench her simmering anxieties, she fixed her hair and applied a bit of perfume. Then she waited.

Fortunately, patience was not a virtue the maiden had to exercise for long. It was not an entire quarter-hour before the doors opened and Alcina walked inside, sidestepping under the frame with practiced ease. The sun had set a while before, _thank heavens_ , so she carried the veil and gloves in her arms. The maiden sat up. It was difficult to see due to the darker shade of the fabric of her dress, but she could smell the scent of the blood staining her sleeves. Not human blood, she immediately noticed, but not from an ordinary animal either.

Alcina let out a deep, languid sigh.

“What was that quote from Macbeth? _A little water clears us of this crime_?”

“Of this deed”, the maiden responded. By this point in her career, she knew her Shakespeare like the back of her hand.

“Just as fitting.”

Alcina dropped the veil and gloves on the armchair, then removed her hat and placed it atop the small pile the items created. There was a tiredness to her posture – her muscles stiff after a long day of work.

“Join me, will you?”

She motioned to the bathroom.

“Of course”, responded the maiden after taking a second to confirm that she would be able to stomach whatever followed suit. Pleased with her answer, Alcina unclasped her necklace and brooch before stepping into the other room. The maiden trailed behind her.

The bathroom matched the remainder of the castle in both elegance and style, except for a single oddity – there were two bathtubs rather than one, placed on opposite sides of the spacious layout. The one to the right had been filled with clear, bubbly water, the temperature so warm that whisps of steam floated above the surface.

The one to the left, however, was filled with blood. Thick and pungent.

Her surprise did not go unnoticed.

“You may find this odd, but one must care for the outside of their form as diligently as they care for the inside”, Alcina explained calmly, reaching behind her neck to undo the hooks of her gown. The maiden counted one, two, three as they came apart, revealing the sliver of skin going down her back.

“Or else?”

She looked over her shoulder, directly at the maiden, and pulled the dress straps right off.

“Or else you get lost, dearest. Awfully lost.”

Slip and garters – the maiden should have guessed as much – were just as efficiently removed. Pinning up her hair, however, was where Alcina took her time, carefully winding each lock around her finger before securing it in place, almost as if she knew the maiden would not be able to look away. The skin of her arms had taken color where the blood had soaked through her clothes.

The maiden understood she was as beautiful as she was dangerous.

And yet… _Dear god_.

“You know, before coming here I would have found it imprudent to bathe with someone I was unfamiliar with”, the maiden pointed out without any particular purpose. She watched, hands twisting around the belt of her robe, as Alcina walked away from the sink and to the left bathtub, then reached into the crimson liquid to test its temperature.

“With that I must agree”, she said, smiling as she looked up at the maiden. “What a splendid thing it is, then, that we are most familiar with one another.”

The maiden looked at her outstretched hand.

“Come. I won’t bite – unless you ask.”

Hesitant, she placed her palm upon it, feeling warmth where there had previously only been cold.

With her other hand she untied the robe.

 _They must have to hang the bodies up_ , she reasoned, _to get so much out._

She was guided to step into the tub, to let her body sink and soak in life unkindly stolen and, despite the best of her intentions, to relish in the comfort it brought.

They sat opposite to each other. She had feared that the height difference would have made things difficult, or at least awkward, but she had failed to consider that, at some point in her life, she had been considerably smaller than the rest of the world, and that it would only take a change in perspective to adapt to how _tiny_ she felt. Still, something stirred inside her. A nerve had been touched somewhere, somehow.

“Yet the only true conversation we had happened while I was drunk and almost unconscious. Our meeting was pleasant, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t imagine you managed to learn much about me”, continued the maiden, submerging herself to the neck in the glassy surface. “My personality, my quirks, or anything else worth more than a dime.”

She had not meant to sneer, but it did come out as such. The woman across from her narrowed her golden eyes. Her tone slipped into something tepid, and from the way she rested her elbows on the edges of the tub and leaned forward, the maiden could predict that she would never really get away with anything.

“Well, yes – our lack of communication is something I am in the process of remedying. I _do_ wish for you to talk”, she said with measured words. “But it would be a disservice to our relationship to ignore all the little clues that do not come from talking.”

Now _that_ caught her attention in an unexpected way.

For the maiden, you see, was an observant creature, and every bit of the show-off she came across as. Therefore, instead of taking offense, she smirked - shifting her weight to her knees and rising above the surface so that she may crawl forward to the other side of the bathtub.

She would be the one biting, it seemed.

“Your favorite color is pink – pale pink. You love to pair it with gold, but you don’t like how it looks with your complexion, so you limit it to the décor and stick to silver jewelry instead”. She kept inching closer as she spoke, as lithe as the snake that crosses the river. “I’m afraid I find your judgment in this matter flawed.”

So near she now was, Alcina’s sighs might as well have been kisses placed onto her cheek.

“See? You know me”. Her hands wrapped around the maiden, and with a strong pull she brought her down to her lap. “Just as I know you. That you are at scholar at heart, for one, or that you were fired from your last job because you kept making eyes at the patron’s wife, something the good sir did not appreciate.”

Perhaps the maiden had confessed as much, in the haze of her final moments, or maybe her former employer had signed off her reference letter with such kind phrase as “ _Poor temper, devious tendencies, attempted adulterer – DO NOT HIRE_ ”. There was also the incident with the hairbrush, used to smack a misbehaving ward, which must have been mentioned at some point in that letter. In any case, how the Lady had truly come across such knowledge was a mystery better left to other pages.

She felt her tongue on her collarbone, wet, and the tips of her teeth sliding over skin as she licked off the blood that stuck it.

“In my defense, I was taking out my frustrations. She was just…”

Without warning, Alcina shifted her body from underneath her, slotting her leg at just the right angle for…

“... _There”_ , the maiden appended with a single breath, her line of thought broken.

“You must have pieced it together by now – that I am jealous in nature.”

If only they had stayed like just that. Alas, either in punishment or for the sake of her routine, Alcina pushed her off from her grasp and stood, spilling on the pristine marbled floor enough blood to fill a bucket. Leaving the maiden to steep in clots and desire.

They washed themselves off in silence. A tense, tight silence, so thick that it caused the maiden to flinch at every brush of skin against her own. She wanted to say it was torture, for her to blow hot and cold that way, but then she recalled the tools set out in the dungeons and the screams for mercy she could not quite manage to avoid, even though her brain kept working hard towards it, and suddenly the comparison felt wrong in the most terrible of ways.

And yet, when she found herself pressed against the soft mattress mere minutes later, she did not even bother trying to stifle her moan.

“I am your first, too, aren’t I?”, the maiden inquired after a particularly self-indulgent motion. She was genuinely curious. The woman above her paused, looking a bit incredulous.

“I can assure you I am more than experienced.”

“No, that is not what I meant”, she immediately corrected. She arched up a bit, at the hips, in a poorly concealed attempt to keep up the momentum. “Whatever mortal girls have laid here before were nothing but distractions, I am sure, and the only three that do matter have never been in this position.”

She was not too far off the mark. The few individuals who were stupid enough to squeal about the happenings at castle Dimitrescu were probably too scarred or too indifferent to keep their accounts faithful to their source material. Who the victims were and what had happened to them was not nearly as important as how their fates could be spun into a cautionary tale – and if what it took for that tale to make the rounds was to claim that all innocent creatures who wandered into the matriarch’s grasp were deflowered like daisies, then so be it.

Like all legends, some truth could be found in it – she was her own flowery counterexample – but it was masked by the misconception that two women could only be close to one another if the devil, or god, somehow laid between them.

After a pause, Alcina conceded with a thickness in her voice, “Company can take many forms”.

She went on to demonstrate her point. The maiden could not manage coherent conversation until a while later.

* * *

Creeping alongside the petty paces of day-to-day, the sun threatened to rise outside the tinted windows. She would have preferred to stay right where she was and just call one of the chambermaids to deal with it, but they had put it off for too long, already. The graphic image of her lover being burned alive was what prompted Alcina to abandon the safety of the unmade bed to shut the curtains. When she turned, she found the maiden sat up against the pillows, eyes fixated in an odd manner.

“Tell me, dearest, what is this look in your face.”

The maiden licked her lips. It would be better if they fed, soon, rather than go to sleep with an empty stomach and risk awaking parched come sunset.

“I am trying to understand you”, she said. Undeniably, she carried the furrowed brows of a mathematician attempting to solve a complicated equation with but a slip of parchment and semi-dried ink. Alcina stalked back to the bed, laying on her right side so that she could remain at eye-level with the girl.

“How so?”

The maiden opened her pretty mouth, trying to find her words, then softly questioned, “Why take a lover now?”

She did not quite like where this was headed, but she nonetheless answered. Ultimately the girl had laid her heart bare, tender and pulsating, and so the very least she could do was to soothe her pressing doubts. She had learnt how to be gentle. Had been forced to, in fact, with how often things tended to crack underneath her touch.

She reached out to the maiden and, with care, tucked a loose lock hair behind her ear. 

“Not just for pleasure, I assure you”, she spoke with an even smile. Then, a bit more shakily, “I was very unhappily matched. A long time ago, mind you, and not of my own will. After such grand fiasco, there is no way I could settle for anything less than perfection”.

The maiden took her hand, entwining their fingers as she had done before, but in her pursed lips it was clear that her undivided attention had been invested towards her quest for comprehension. Alcina pressed her lips to her temple, lightly, and she seemed to relax from the gesture.

“That is what you are – _perfect_.”

Her favorite part? That it was true. The greatest philosophers, fools as they were, had wasted lifetimes defending the idea that perfection was either undefinable or unachievable. Meanwhile, Lady Alcina Dimitrescu had spent equally as long composing her thesis on the matter, detailing in minute details all its intricate components, and the proof to her argument was sitting right in front of her, basking in her afterglow.

All hers. Now and forever.

“You were married?”, the maiden pressed, though distracted by the compliment.

“Something like it”, she confessed as if bile had travelled up her esophagus. Then, noticing the concern that had disturbed her consort’s equilibrium, she strived for lightness: “Must we discuss this now? It is no bedtime story.”

Resting back against the pillows, the maiden shrugged, though in her wide eyes flashed something dark and all-knowing.

“Sleep evades those in a curious state. Unless you would rather not.”

Maybe it was the way she oh-so-innocently let her legs fall open, the maiden-turned-vixen, or the relief that came with finally having someone other than Mother Miranda with whom she could truly share her sins, that for the first time since her death, Alcina chose to tell someone about her life.

“Fine, pet. But you must distract me, while I talk, or else my hatred for those involved will spoil our evening.”

How obedient the maiden could be, given the right incentives.

 _Obscenely so, in fact_.

“Noble damsels get married off for the most disenchanted of reasons”, she began with her voice already hitched. “In my case, it was to secure the castle and vineyard which were already mine by birthright. They sent me here, all alone, to wait out my betrothal.”

Her hand trailed to the maiden’s neck, fingers taking hold of a fistful of hair, securing her precisely where she wanted. “This was a cold place, then, and mournful, and all their plans were founded on a blatant disregard for my wishes. It left me furious – _furious, dearest_ \- but I was helpless. And so, without any true power in my hands to save myself, I did the one thing I had been diligently taught to do. I prayed.”

The maiden looked up at her, then, and it was almost as if she had been lost in worship, too.

“Prayed for the autonomy I was owed. For a family that cared for my well-being”. Then, lower, “For my groom to drop dead.”

Poetic, it was – that a memory that endured so bitter could turn silky sweet when shared underneath warm candlelight. Like water to wine, that may burn away shadows and inhibitions. 

“On my wedding night, my pleads were answered.”

She was quiet for a long while, after that. It was not a pause of hesitation, the maiden understood, nor was it one from regret. An ordinary person would have guessed that the Lady had simply gotten caught up in one of past’s nasty traps, one which she would have to be gently lulled out of, or perhaps that her silence was a polite way of withdrawing from the conversation. Either would be an incorrect conclusion. The maiden knew this, of course. They were in fact too well acquainted for her not to immediately recognize that rumbling. That low, almost imperceptible rumbling. Like somebody had forgotten the radio on in one of the rooms upstairs and you ended up hearing your name being called amidst the static.

Because the maiden heard it, too. Heard it when the world was quiet and she could no longer listen to her beating heart to pass the time. Felt it in her bones, which did not hold her up quite as they once had. Saw it, even, when her reflection stared back and drew her into the valley of uncanny resemblance.

A beast, growling at the smell of the hunt.

And so, when Alcina pulled her away by the hair and told her to lay on her stomach, the maiden was more than happy to comply. Let there be bruises, let there be pain – damn, let her be the scandal of the village, for all she cared. As long as she got to see that sweet vindication that was lost control.

Could it truly be called compliance, she defended, if the entire evening had gone according to her design?

No, she did not think so. 

“Mother Miranda – the mother of miracles, is she not?”, the maiden offered well after, bringing her sticky mouth nearer to receive a kiss.

“Saving the both of us, I believe, was a miracle that only she could achieve. _In life and in death, we give glory._ ”

That was the first time the maiden heard such a crucial expression. She repeated it, under her breath, because not honoring the hymn felt wrong – as if the trees and the wind and the soil itself demanded it, somehow. 

“And the husband?”, she inquired after their attention had once more been turned inwards. Before responding, Alcina pressed her lips twice, to each cheek, then a third time to her lips.

“Buried that same night, along with all my other banes.”

 _Then I shall salt his grave_ , the maiden promised with all the conviction stored in her being. Still, she did not proclaim it aloud, having long learned that her spiteful nature was something better written in-between her lines, rather than the front covers of her identity. Another kiss, and with their bodies pressed together like this, entwined, the maiden questioned how she had ever managed to endure solitude.

She did not think to say that it felt good, even though it did; nor right, which it most certainly was not; and when the word _idealized_ crossed her mind, the maiden immediately crumpled it in her hands and tossed it away to the fireplace ashes.

It felt like what the world was supposed to feel like – and that was that.

The maiden exhaled, content. “Sounds to me like a happy ending.”

All those skeletons in the basement begged to differ.

 _Shush_ , she scolded, _I will just need to find some hounds to chew on those bones._

“ _Dearest. My dearest”_ , the Lady muttered, more to her heart than to her ears. “At last, the family tree complete.”

The maiden would soon sleep, and then she would wake, just as she had done a thousand times before. But before she could manage to rest in her lover’s arms - something she would do from that night onwards and from which she would derive her greatest comfort - the idea of family kept her awake for a heavy hour. She started by thinking what the word had meant to her before all things changed. About what she had to abandon. Then her thoughts drifted towards what family could become to her. She thought of the castle, at first, yet without her voluntary input the picture became wider, and soon enough she could map out the entire village landscape in her mind’s eye.

Without rhyme nor reason, an image invaded her thoughts. It was, she slowly realized, the depiction of Mother Miranda she had come across while roaming the dungeons. A small piece of photograph paper, crumpled at the edge, likely left behind by a handler who craved a bit of mercy. How strange. She had not even paid attention to it, before, but now it appeared that the iconography had been burnt into her memory.

Mother and her cold, piercing eyes.

* * *

_[REDACTED], 2022._

As he did with most other things, Ethan Winters ran like his life depended on it.

Not without reason, to his dismay, for it truly did.

He all but crawled up the stairs, trying to balance his weight between his torn right knee and his bleeding left hand, where the bite near his wrist had began to bruise into a marbled mess, leaking fluid of purple and grey.

Purple he could deal with. Grey, on the other hand, bore too much resemblance to someone… _to something else_ for him to be at peace.

The cloud of insects stalked him no matter how well he hid, scratching and stinging and prickling the patches of skin already swollen and bumpy. Just the incessant buzzing they made was enough to drive him nearly insane.

“Walking in circles, are you?”, came the voice over his shoulder.

_Fuck._

He ran faster. Up the stairs, then left, and left again. The pistol had to be kept in his good arm to be of any use, which meant he had no choice but to search his pockets with his wounded hand, scrambling for his salvation amidst the gunpowder and ammo. Every little move felt like his fingers were being broken, one by one, for the second time that day.

_Sadistic hags._

He felt his teeth crack with how strongly he clenched his jaw.

 _Come on_ , he pleaded to himself, dodging behind a bookshelf and holding his breath.

Ethan had, a few rooms back, come across a metal key too ornate to be unimportant. He now held it in his bloodied palm.

There had to be a door he accidentally missed. Had to – for the alternative was that he finally ran out of options.

 _A door,_ he thought _, for Rose._

_A door, for Mia._

For himself, even, if it came down to it.

And with how lucky the unlucky tend to be, it was obvious that there was a match between key and keyhole just around the corner. The entrance was so plain, compared to the extravagance of the castle, that one could not be blamed for missing it in passing. But it was there, just as it had always been, and an audible sigh of relief was heard as Ethan ducked inside and locked the door behind himself.

He looked up, then, and all relief drained from his body like a clammy chill.

The statue, despite the beautiful artistry of its carved stone, was a terrifying sight. No positive emotion had been imbued into the delicate curves of the women depicted; no immortalized wonder in how the folds of the draped fabric created the illusion of softness underneath the rock; no grace, no elegance, no divinity.

Just someone getting their heart ripped out.

Soon enough, it would be him. Worse - his daughter.

Both, from the likeness of it.

It must have been the infection spreading across his system, he later argued; some sort of hallucination, if this Progenitor strain was anything like the Mold back at Louisiana; or maybe he was tired. In the end, the distinction did not really matter. What mattered was that something peculiar took place.

From the tip of the chiseled dagger, Ethan saw a drop of blood drip to the floor.

Something changed in that moment.

A drop of blood - that was all that remained of his small, broken, precious family.

_So why should he feel guilty for destroying theirs?_

Ethan reloaded his gun, took a deep breath, and kept moving forward.

* * *

_“All your life you've never seen_

_Woman taken by the wind_

_Would you stay if she promised you heaven?_

_Will you ever win?”_

_\- Rhiannon, Fleetwood Mac_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever since the development team announced that Elizabeth Báthory and Morticia Addams were two of the main sources of inspiration for Lady Dimitrescu, I realized I had to integrate a few of these elements into her backstory, even if just so that I could get my theories on paper. 
> 
> Is it realistic to what the game will show?  
> I doubt it, but at least it gives me an excuse to write a tango scene later on. 
> 
> I only joke, of course. They seem more like waltz people. 
> 
> (Mind you, this maiden clearly knows how to swordfight better than Gomez Addams.) 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	3. Devotion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whispers, voices, and screams. So many of them, she could no longer tell them apart from her own. 
> 
> Maiden, they said, they are coming for your heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains graphic content that some readers may find disturbing. Take a break, if you need to.

_“I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful.”_

― Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

* * *

_July 16 th, 1978_

Summers at the castle often felt like a universe of their own. The days were long and warm, heavy-lidded as a capricious goddess basking in a flower-covered field, and the languidness they brought along with them, hand-in-hand, was capable of slowing down even the most ambitious individuals. The wind blew gentler, somehow, and the water creeks flew clearer as they joined to fill in the village’s reservoir. Winter’s suffering had long passed. The rain poured down, tending to the plentiful crops, and with the foreboding fall still miles away, preoccupation slipped from most minds.

Surrounded by so much life, even the Dimitrescu women felt tempted to put down the stresses of their position and relax. Drink a little deeper, to refresh their bodies. Rest on pillows, in the shade. Or, perhaps, simply indulge in the hobbies that the coven obligations always seemed to deviate them from. Mother Miranda would never approve of idleness, of course, but with her so far away it became easy to believe that what the eyes do not see, the heart does not grieve over. Her grappling presence had not been missed.

Her silence, however, left a bitter aftertaste in every sweet indulgence.

Laying diagonally on her marital bed, pinned against the mattress, the maiden watched the dammed rotary phone with cautious eyes. Thirty-two days they had gone without a call. Thirty-two days. Not a note, telegram, or decapitated goat delivered to their door, either. She would not deny that she had appreciated the peace, at the beginning, but now it only felt like a matter of time before the phone would ring again, and with it all the despairs and anxieties would come crashing down on them like a merciless wave.

“Eyes on me, pet”, Alcina said, reaching out with her unoccupied hand to grasp the maiden by the chin. “Eyes on me.”

The maiden met her gaze nearly immediately, breathing out, “Oh, always”.

Truer statement had never been said. In the near twenty years since their union, they had managed to attune themselves in a way the maiden would once not have thought possible, much less have expected. Every tone, every gesture, every curve that made up her being – all of it diligently studied. Adored a thousand times over. As an academic, the maiden not once considered letting up on her practice.

Especially not when faced with such a pretty sight. Alcina, stretched atop her frame with the self-satisfied smirk of the cat who got the cream. Alcina, with her curls loosened and sweat trickling down her chest. Alcina, hers – and that was that.

Many a poet had dedicated themselves to immortalizing the intoxicating image of the damsel spent from a night of passion. Though she did not criticize them for it – the strategically placed mirror, facing her from the corner of the room, told her exactly how appetizing she could look in those moments - the maiden found they often overlooked a much better subject.

The all-powerful madam softened by the throws of love. An entity capable of delivering pleasure and pain within the same touch – of breaking her in half, really, if she so desired – rendered beautifully malleable by the maiden’s responsive attentions.

Alcina led their dance, always, but it was the maiden who picked the song.

Tonight had been a waltz, one whose rhythm had slowed down with every time she had been brought over the edge. She reached up, then, to lick the blood from the corner of Alcina’s lip, the tip of her tongue sliding over the already-smudged lipstick. So thoroughly distracted as they were, the unconscious girl by the foot of the bed had already been forgotten. Her warm blood pooled underneath the incisions on her wrists, staining the carpet with a fervor that was sure to annoy whoever was tasked to clean up the mess, come morning.

Alcina hummed, pleased, and redistributed her weight so that she may apply more pressure with her wrist. “What was that you were saying, again? Something about how you are going to take me to France this October?”, she questioned with a low voice.

So skilled she was, even the most banal topics seemed to convert into riveting conversation whenever she brought them up.

The maiden put up an exaggerated inflection to compensate for the lack of breath, “I just know you will love it. The lights, the sights, the romance of it all.”

Encouraged by her words, Alcina dragged the maiden closer to the center of the bed. Her sharp nails dug deep into her flesh, heady, bruising the skin of her ass and that which covered her hip bones. Any marks would heal in due time, anyways, so there was no reason as to why she should not relish in them before they could fade.

“Yes, I can image it”, she mused, building up their shared fantasy. “The two of us, strolling arm-in-arm along the Versailles gardens. A clear, starry sky above us.”

“Plenty of young things to feed on, too”, the maiden lightly added. “We will fit right in with how much they have to offer.”

Shapeshifting was a wonderful ability.

The maiden was fond of her family’s uniqueness, of course, and quite satisfied with the byproducts of her own embrace. She had no qualms with the light aversion, nor with the stone-cold skin, and though for some unknown reason she could not transform into a swarm of creatures, as her daughters were able, she had enough unnatural talents of her own to make up for it. Her condition was a blessing, not a punishment.

Her dear wife, on the other hand, harbored more resentments towards it than one would initially imagine.

Alcina’s exasperation was not frequent. When it did appear, however, the maiden was the first to take notice. There was a silent upset whenever she came across a dress she enjoyed, in one of those glossy fashion magazines, and was suddenly struck with the reminder that she would have to call on her seamstresses to create a copy. No designer house carried her size, she would huff in disdain. Other times she would stop eating half-way through dinner, for no apparent reason, claiming that the liver was spoiled, or the spleen was making her sick. When this happened, it was not uncommon for her to fast for the next couple of days, nursing but a glass of _Sanguis Virginis_ until her real appetite was restored.

The worst of all took place after some of Mother Miranda’s demands. Sometimes a bath would not be enough to wash the memories away, and Alcina would sit in front of her vanity mirror for hours on end. Horror troubled her spirit as she scrutinized her reflection. _What despicable creatures we are_ , she would lament, her posture stiffened beneath the light touch of the hand on her shoulder.

The melancholy confused the maiden, who felt infinitely more repulsion towards dog-eared book pages than to Lovecraftian horrors, but she offered her comfort and validation without complaints.

Shapeshifting was a wonderful ability, for it allowed them to play human for a bit. It was true that the maiden felt no personal need for humanity – she preferred to use the technique for vulgar, infinitely more decadent ends, as had been wonderfully demonstrated that same night – but if it pleased her wife, then she promised to warm her blood and take on her mortal visage. To drink champagne, and sleep through the night, and buy her as many shoes as she demanded from the small, impossibly quaint boutiques that lined up the cobbled streets. She would take sole responsibility for the body count necessary to keep this up for a month, or three, or however long they decided to stay. As long as it made her happy, the maiden thought, then killing or being killed would surmount to the same bliss.

Amused by the enthusiasm, Alcina let out a hoarse laugh. “The way you describe it – makes me want to purchase a holiday estate in Côte d'Azur.”

They had discussed acquiring a new vineyard before. Even with the troubles of the Cold War, the wide world had expanded to just within their reach over the last decade, and suddenly it seemed rather unproductive not to develop their dominion beyond the village borders.

“Ask, and I will build you one”, the maiden added, playing up the chivalry she knew was endearing.

“Of that I have no doubts.”

Her voice dropped lower when she brought her mouth to the maiden’s neck, laying something between a lingering kiss and a bite in the soft, full curve of the skin right below her jaw. The maiden arched closer as her teeth sunk in, her own hands grasping Alcina’s back with a hefty dose of desperation, then fell down when she pulled back. A string of thick, red-tinged saliva connected the open wound to her chin, and she did not bother cleaning it off. Her smile, which now had turned into a predatory baring of teeth, was similarly stained.

With her hand covering the wound, she applied a steady pressure. The maiden choked on her words. Although she had no need for oxygen, and neither bleeding nor suffocation could be a threat to one already dead, the act simply stirred something in her. She implored, _“Please”_ , because her pride could do nothing to silence that growling in the shadow-ridden corners of her mind. 

And then they were dancing something else, altogether.

Tango, the maiden decided, biting her knuckle to keep from crying out. She was sure she would end up waking the servants were she to allow herself to go unrestrained. But the consciousness over her state kept her grounded – that, and the strength of Alcina’s touch, tethering her to this mortal plane in unison.

“Good, is it not?”, Alcina asked, sweet and patient as though they had not done the exact same choreography a hundred times over. Her golden eyes gleamed stark against the moonlight. She asked, even at the risk of sounding redundant, because the satisfaction of receiving a half-composed answer outperformed the obviousness of the muscle memory in all arenas. At the sound of the maiden’s enthusiastic _yes_ she kissed her, on her receptive lips, then again over the slant of a breast and the round of her stomach. All too slowly - too agonizingly. Once she reached her thigh, however, her mouth pressed into muscle with enough force to rip out a piece of the maiden, were she not as resilient as she was. Hurting was the intent. The veins ruptured beneath the dermis, bruising quickly and delightfully.

She whispered with affection unmatched by any and all tales of love written by the great plume masters, “Dearest, I could destroy you. Tear you apart”. 

“Do it”, beckoned the maiden, who found devastation the greatest form of passion, “You and I made as one.”

And she would have, earnestly and honestly, had the dammed phone not started ringing the next moment.

_There it was._ That loud, nauseating, ludicrous ring. Maiden and mistress remained stock-still as the sound echoed around the room, unpleasant as being hit with a bucket of cold water in early February.

“ _Fuck_. I cannot believe it.”, the maiden cursed, hands running through her hair. It took every drop of willpower in her body not to snip the landline cord with a pair of scissors that same second.

Alcina looked at her with a similar look of defeat. “Your intuition is positively occult, dearest”, she commented, drying off her fingers on the sheets before swinging her long legs over the edge of the bed. She nearly stepped on the unconscious girl as she went to pick up the call.

“Mother Miranda. How can we help you this fine…”. Her eyes darted to the open windows, where it was possible to see a sliver of sunrise beyond the edge of the forest, dying the clouds above a lovely shade of pink. Pressing the phone to her shoulder, she reached out to close the curtains before continuing, “…Morning?”.

The maiden watched her expression as she listened to her reply. At first there was mostly annoyance, corrupted by a drip of obligation, but then her eyebrows lifted, and her lips gaped slightly. Disbelief, it was. Confusion. The maiden resented the phone more with each passing second. Only a fragment of her attention could be dedicated to observation, however, as something coarser than fury and paler than jealousy began toiling at her insides, the feeling of it unpleasant as a parasite that crawls up one’s intestines.

This same scene had taken place one too many times.

Mother Miranda, interrupting their rest.

Mother Miranda, barging into their home unannounced to drag away their daughters, coercing them to fulfill whatever whim she could not bother to attended personally.

Mother Miranda, bringing them to their knees to beg for forgiveness she had no right to yield.

In her youth, the maiden had already been disillusioned with the authority of divinity. Gods had only ever been dead corpses to whom she conversed. Frequently, granted, though to others it never seemed enough.

Not once did it prove her goodness.

From all the virtuous teachings - and there had been many - she kept only the guilt and moved on with her life, mostly unaffected. Despite this, she had always excelled at going through the motions of the practice – she could easily put on the face of devotion to fulfill the rites; she knew her prayers, syllable by syllable, and as she spoke them aloud, the intonation of her voice carried the melody of belief; most notably, she could very well beg for forgiveness, and lie her way out of every repentance.

It had been true, then, as it was now. Were she really to be honest with herself, the maiden could have kept the charade going until the end of the world. She found the effort it took a very small price compared to the stability that the congregation offered to their position – they were comfortable, safe, and revered by all those foolish mortals exhausted to the point of blind acceptance. There were also the practical, perfectly scientifical benefits to be considered. After all, the maiden argued, building a cult around the key to immortality _was_ the most logical course of action.

Perhaps it would all have been fine – had she not begun to grow restless.

“Yes, of course. Just a moment.”

Alcina sat on the regal chair, a hint of uncertainty betrayed in her narrowed gaze, then fumbled through the drawers for her stationary set. The cap of the cartridge pen hit the polished vanity surface with a muted _clink_. Standing up from the bed, the maiden watched as the page was filled with her meticulous, though rather indecipherable handwriting, followed by another, and another.

_Restless_ , she continued to herself, because each new day begged the question of which deity they struggled to mollify – that whose blood ran through the branches and soil that protected the village, or Miranda herself?

“Five to each house? Are you certain?”, repeated Alcina, her hand stilling for a brief moment. Then, in an almost apologetic tone, she added, “No, I am not questioning your decision. Please do continue”.

The maiden sat down by the unconscious mortal on the floor, cold hands reaching to test her pulse above the broken skin of her wrist.

She counted.

Alive, the maiden concluded, creating a mental note to ask the head of staff to give a warm bath and hardy meal to…

This one was new – second night, to be precise - so the maiden could not recall her name off the top of her head. She turned the girl’s arm over, looking at the inscription on her golden bracelet.

… Number twelve. Bath and meal to number twelve. It would be best if she consulted with the doctor, as well, given how they had drunk a fair amount more than their usual. The maiden would be sure to mention it. She had long made it her mission to ensure that their retainers were, if nothing else, well-kept.

A shadow of care could be seen projected on the wall behind them as the maiden gently brought one of the fallen blankets over the girl’s form. Unfortunately, as is the case with most illusions, such shadow was misleading. 

“And how are we to invoke these candidates?”, Alcina questioned. Her eyes followed the maiden through the reflection on the mirror as she prowled closer. The muffled sounds coming from the other side of the line were foreboding.

As the maiden sat and straddled Alcina’s left leg, she swore it was only a needy display of affection, and not curiosity driving her to overhear the conversation. The grinding, on the other hand, was most definitely a display,

“Consider it done”, Alcina affirmed with a bit more intent than she had previously sported. She initiated the motion to hang up the phone, seen as Mother Miranda’s interests often began and ended with matters of the coven, but something she said made Alcina stop with her hand in mid-air. She brought the phone back to her ear.

“Pardon?”

A beat. She looked down at the maiden, who had been tracing the stretchmarks that painted her chest with her fingertips, and pursed her lips.

“She is here, yes. I will put her on.”

The maiden took the phone with as much uncertainty as Alcina handed it to her. Her body quieted down as though she had been bit by a venomous snake, her muscles contracting from the unpredicted stress, while her mind rushed in a thousand directions at once.

She would have easily preferred to talk to the devil herself.

“Mother Miranda.”

Even Alcina’s encouraging touch on the small of her back could not thaw the glaciers’ worth of ice that coated the maiden’s voice. Yet, to the untrained ear, the gelid tone might have been mistaken for fear. Adoration.

_“Sweet child… I hope that you are well.”_

Oh, she had been. Until mother dearest called, that is. The maiden hoped the sugary mask was enough to deflect from the hostility.

“I am, thank you for asking. How have the warm breezes of the Mediterranean treated you?”

Mother’s cadence was a horrible, deceitful sound.

_“Splendidly, I must admit. The views have brought me a great deal of perspective. Speaking of which…”_

“Yes?”, the maiden asked, bracing herself to the dagger that would surely sheath itself into her poor, undead heart. Having felt the tension, Alcina nuzzled the top of her head, arms bringing her close as though her embrace could ever hope to protect them from the crone’s ire.

_“A child of Moreau has recently mentioned that you have been making inquires about plane tickets. Do you intend to travel?”_

_Miserable bastard_ , the maiden inwardly swore, though her composure endured, smooth and even.

“Indeed, that is the plan. Travel to France, this fall, and maybe stop by Switzerland on the way back”.

_“That does sound wonderful”_ , mother remarked so full of duplicity. _“My child – I must, unfortunately, be the purveyor of unpleasant news.”_

“Tell me, then.”

She went back to moving, because if she must play daft, at least she could still take pleasure in defiling the sanctity of coven hierarchy and all its due respects. 

_“You must be here come October. There is no other way.”_

Of course. The situation was so predictable that the maiden laughed in her mind. The sort of laugh that was dark and unbending.

“What for, sweet Mother, if I may be permitted to ask?”

Her feigned pain was met with intensity.

_“To finally put into motion that which we have been working towards all these years. Your persuasiveness might very well be the key to our salvation.”_

The maiden committed the line to memory, calculatingly, before putting her _persuasiveness_ to work.

“I… I am be honored to be of service. In life, and in death, may I give glory.”

None would have blamed her for giving into disappointment. In fact, those who had only met her in passing might have even expected her to. Expected that her throat would close, that her lungs would become heavy, or even that her eyes might become glossy with unshed tears.

_Poor maiden, they would think, being kept on such a short leash by the cruel matron._

A victim of her own villainy. Then again, these people were so wrong in their measurement of her character, they might as well consider that they have never met her at all. 

_“Do not disappoint me”,_ warned Mother Miranda, sounding somewhat conflicted at the earnest jubilation, right before she hung up.

The maiden dropped the phone into its stand - ripping out the metaphorical dagger with one fluid motion and discarding it to the floor. Funny enough, she felt what was perhaps the farthest emotion from disappointment there is.

Triumph.

For the maiden took note of every unreasonable demand they were made. Every flower plucked, every chain fastened, every wing clipped. And she had every intention to take her payment, with interest, when the time was right.

“Oh, pet”, cooed Alcina, who saw the glittering ember that burned behind the maiden’s otherwise unwavering gaze, “I simply _adore_ when you go for the jugular like that.”

She really should not be blamed for radicalizing her family against their leader’s arrogance. The Dimitrescu might have been benefactors to a much larger cause, yes, but at no point were they ever mindless minions. Serving the coven was one thing, respecting it another, and treating Miranda as a saint was a possibility written on another plane altogether. And in a life as dull as theirs… Well, they had to find some source of danger to play with, even if only in the protected secrecy of their quarters.

“Vicars know not to denounce the loyal covenant of false faith”, mused the maiden, untangling herself from Alcina’s hold so that she may stand up. They could both use a drink.

Alcina threw her arm over the back of the chair, her figure decadent as though she were posing for a boudoir shot. “You know, maybe the time has come for me to stop enabling your nihilistic tendencies. We both know how much damage that woman is capable of. And yet… Well, small rebellions, I suppose.”

“Far too small for my tastes”, the maiden hummed. She procured two glasses from the tray where they were replaced nightly by the servants, then picked out the gold-and-glass decanter from amidst the selection of wine bottles. The lid produced a clear sound when she removed it. “We should just go. Travel now and stay all the way through spring. I’m sure the Beneviento’s brand of torture is infinitely more efficient than my alleged diplomatic abilities, in any case.”

She poured out a full glass for each. When she turned, she realized that Alcina had been watching her with the impenetrable gaze that she reserved for threats to her territory, hallmarked by the lowered eyelids and narrow pupils. The last thing many a mortal had seen. Or, for those unlucky enough to have survived it, the centerpiece of all resulting nightmares.

The maiden swallowed thickly. She had only mentioned their possible escape in jest, of course, but it seemed to be enough to drive the lady of the castle into a much fouler mood.

“We will simply postpone our trip to December”, she said plainly. In the twitching of her cheek, however, was obscured a paralyzing demand not to argue against her decision. _Do not dare_ , it said. And so the maiden, who had long been a player of that particular game, placed down her cards with a sigh.

“If we must. Tell me, what is our next assignment?”

She walked back, slowly, and offered her the glass with sincere demureness.

“It was an odd request, this time”, Alcina said after a small sip. “She wishes us to evaluate couples. Each house must procure five and select the most suitable. The coven will then pick that which produces the best outcome – _whatever that means_.”

This time, the maiden sat on the vanity itself, pushing the stationary and a few toiletries aside. It did give her the advantage of the higher ground, for once.

“You’d think that keeping us in the dark would not bide well for her expectations.”

A knot akin to dread stuck to the maiden’s throat as she spoke. She promptly washed it down with more wine. Alcina crossed her arms, tension ill-concealed in the way she clenched her jaw.

“You are right. _Suitable, outcome_ , even the number _five_ – she is never this vague.”

There was a poignant pause amidst the silence of the sleeping castle. When it became too heavy, the maiden tapped her fingernails against the glass. “Perhaps she no longer trusts us?”, she questioned as if she were dissecting her own judgements. The rational side of her mind immediately dismissed the concern before it even formed itself into words, but instinct had all but ripped it out from her thoughts and regurgitated it into reality.

Flinching as if she had accidentally touched a lit candle, Alcina shook her head. Her voice as she next spoke was impossibly low, barely a whisper, and the hand she placed on the maiden’s leg was clearly for her own comfort.

“ _No_. No, we are all she truly has. Her children and her children’s children. Mighty as she may be, dearest, she does not have the luxury of mistrusting us.”

Either end of the argument seemed to scare her.

Fear, the maiden had decided, suited her as poorly as abandoned crypts and unloved rooms. Fear was, after all, hideous. It was a feeble, pitiful creature nibbling at the edges of consciousness. It had no business even being referred to in the same sentence as Alcina. And so, after seeing it crawling towards their direction, smearing blood all over the carpet, the maiden kicked the emotion in the stomach as though it were rabid.

She kicked it to the hallway, with no mercy, and locked the door behind her.

_Let it try to scratch its way in._

“Then our goddess must have outgrown virginal sacrifices”, she said with a lightness near impossible to conjure, and finished off the last of her drink.

Alcina was silent for a moment longer, processing the weight of her words. The gentle squeeze she gave her after she had returned to the conversation could only mean _“You surprise me”_.

“Then times really are changing”, Alcina breathed out with the satisfaction of turning the page on a very dreary novel. “The context matters not. We shall have it done.”

The maiden nodded, placing her hand over Alcina’s as she always had done.

She sensed it, then – the sun rising above the tree crests, illuminating the vast forest land and warming the stones of the castle walls. A lethargy difficult to ignore. Her eyes wandered to their bed, with its pillows set out in disarray, and the maiden came to the frustrating conclusion that it would be better to count her blessings.

“Take me to bed.”

* * *

Many an occultist had painted the vampire as a territorial creature.

Their less utilitarian counterpart – the writer – had stolen the theory and spun it into a frilly tale – claimed that vampires slept on homeland soil, drank only the blood of brethren, and slowly became bound to their domain. Be it by a stroke of luck or by pure coincidence, this depiction turned out to be a passably accurate one, even if only when it pertained the creatures born of that village of shadows.

Indeed, the dark flowers decorating castle Dimitrescu were grown in earth taken from another village, two hundred or so kilometers south from the estate grounds. There was also a perfectly justifiable reason as to why a French architect had been hired to overlook the wall renovations, a hundred and sixty years prior; why all the wood in the house were exports from the former Portuguese colonies, shipped through the restless ocean before they could be carved into ornate floorings and sculpted doors; and to why, if one were to look close enough, they could always find a Russian nested doll tucked away in the oddest of corners – as if someone had placed them there, deliberately, to keep alive the faint memories of a childhood lived a world’s away.

To occultists, this was enough proof of their theory.

To writers, or at least some of them, it seemed more like a poor attempt at characterization.

Where this hypothesis of territorialism fell short, however, was where it failed to consider the extend of the domain. It included most land, of course, acquired either by crossed arms or by birthright, and all the material elements held within it. The castle. The village. The servants, as well, for the sake of accuracy. Alcina might even have considered the wine an intrinsic part of hers.

But, most importantly, a vampire’s domain was composed of their bloodline.

Their sire – that who had brought them into the night.

Their children – those converted by the sharing of their curse.

And themselves.

The maiden, fond of her intrinsic nature as she had quickly understood herself to be, would agree to being called territorial. However, she would make a point of elaborating that, unlike her wife – who dedicated her waking hours to perfecting her realm with the care and preciseness of an artist painting what is sure to be their masterpiece – she saw herself in the position of a protector.

A conservator of their domain’s well-being, she might declare, though she would gladly set aside her disinterest in violence to shred the skin of those who dared disturb it.

Nevertheless, she fulfilled her role well.

She was needed - for the varnish that held together their painted little world had a maddening tendency to crack.

It was with this preservation in mind that the maiden walked the halls of the castle with sharp eyes. She hunted for the smallest misplacement of furniture – her wife stumbled into them if they were not in their exact place, due to how much of her grace came from long-woven memory, and to throw away servants for mistakes that could have been prevented felt like such a waste – and distortion of equilibrium. Crying staff were promptly sent to their quarters, misbehaving retainers were disciplined, and her upset daughters were soothed to the best of her abilities.

Why they were so often upset, on the other hand, was a mystery the maiden had not yet managed to crack. She _did_ come a step closer to it, that evening.

The ballet studio, located on the third floor, was the perfect picture of opulence caught up in decay. The price of the grand piano alone could have easily fed the entire village for a year or two, and the mirrors that covered the high-ceiling space gave an odd feeling of expansiveness to those who stood in front of it. Even the collection of vinyl records, the most recent addition to the room, was nothing short of excessive. And yet, the pile of pointe shoes tossed aside directed judgment towards a much sinister compulsion.

Walking into the room, the maiden was met with her three daughters. The oldest, sat on the piano, was too caught up in the piece she played to notice her arrival. The middle one, their sweet ballerina, danced the choreography with the dedication of a principal in her first opening night. Finally, the youngest, who never cared much for music nor dance, rested in the sofa on the opposite side of the room, braiding the hair of the passed-out mortal who laid in her lap.

_Pas de Myrtha_ , the maiden recognized, taking a seat next to Daniela.

“They have been at it for three hours”, she commented with a hint of annoyance, undoing the braid and starting it again. The maiden noticed how dead the ballerina’s shoes already were.

“Let them have their fun”, she whispered, then looked at the slack jaw of the mortal girl her daughter was all but cradling. “What did you give her?”.

“Heroin. She keeps bruising way too easily, even when I don’t mean to give her pain. Medicine makes her blood disgusting to drink, true, but at least she doesn’t look miserable all the time.”

The maiden had seen mortals in a much worse shape, but it did not change the fact that this one had a sickly look about her. Again, she could not recall her name, but she did know she had been working for them for a handful of years.

“Pick someone else. Let her rest for a bit.”

Daniela brushed away the advice along with the tresses of blonde hair. “No. I like listening to her talk.”

“Suit yourself, then”, the maiden dismissed, turning to the other two with a warm smile, “That was impressive.”

“It was all wrong”, lamented the ballerina. She looked on the verge of tears, now, even though her expression had been nothing but pleasant mere seconds prior. Her eldest daughter stood from the piano with the ennui of someone who had fulfilled their share of pleasantries for the day.

“Sister, I am sick of playing. Make do with the recording.”

The ballerina ignored her, pacing back and forth in front of the mirror.

“I was all wrong – I keep missing the mark, and those adages were just atrocious, and…”

“Nobody is even going to see you dance”, interrupted Daniela, who never had the patience for what she considered oversensitive blabbering.

The ballerina stopped. Her quivering lips contracted as if in anguish.

_“I know!”,_ came her bark. A ferocious, violent sound exclaimed as though the words themselves were intended to cause damage to those who heard them. Gone was her perfect posture – instead, her shoulders slumped forward, like a vulture preparing to dive into a carcass before another could beat it to the meal.

_Time to intervene._

The maiden raised her hand to her oldest, who had been heading to the door cautiously, ultimately detached from the scene. With an even tone, she requested, “Since you’re done playing, please ask the servants to send someone up. I think your sister needs a drink.”

Dutiful as always, she nodded and disappeared into the shadows. She would only be found hours later, sitting still as a statue in the pitch-black darkness of one of the unused rooms, or maybe beating to black and blue whichever passerby had been the slowest of the pack. Not overly fond of social interaction, their firstborn.

Daniela rolled her eyes, untied the braid, and started again. The air around them was heavy.

Shaking, the ballerina nevertheless dared to claim, “I’m fine”.

_Love, none of us are ever fine._

Not wishing to poke her pride, the maiden merely raised an eyebrow.

“Right. Well, if the choreography is bothering you, then I can ask one of our contacts in Italy to lend us one of their dance masters.”

With the idea finally breaking down her defenses, the ballerina approached them, sitting on the floor with crossed legs. Familiar with all their mannerisms, the maiden took this as a good sign.

“No, it’s not the choreography. It’s the… The feeling. I keep getting the feeling wrong”, her daughter admitted.

Then she reached for her hand, gently, and held it between hers, making it so very easy to forget. Forget that they were not biologically related; that she was nearly two centuries older; even that her perfectionism stemmed not from passion, but from a primal, bloodthirsty animal whispering to her ear.

“Mama, please, give me a _prima_. I want a Russian Giselle. From the Bolshoi – _oh_ , or maybe the Imperial.”

_A Giselle_ , the maiden mused, _what an innocent request_.

One for her Myrtha to dance to death, she was sure.

Alas, whereas vampirism had sharpened some of the maiden’s edges, it had also softened others.

“I will arrange for it, alright?”

Though a flash of appreciation could be seen in the girl’s face, it was immediately pulled back by that shadowy, uncertain posture. She got up and paced back to the center of the room, without a word, and began powering through a series of fouettés with inhuman precision.

Ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred.

Her world reduced to the movement of her arms to the weight placed upon the tip of her toes. Then, as if she had been caught off-guard by her own reflection, her heel slipped, and she lost balance. The silence that followed was deafening. Not a breath could be heard. Shocked, the maiden stood to help her up, but before she could reach the ballerina, she yanked out her ballet shoes, ripping the ribbons and elastics at the stitches.

As if possessed by a feral creature, her daughter threw one of the shoes at the mirror. The surface cracked where it was hit by the block, forming a cobweb pattern as the impact spread over the material and pieces detached from the wall behind it. 

Before anything could be said or done, she transformed into a cloud of moths and flew out of the room, extinguishing the candles in her path.

Though she knew her daughter would be fine – they always turned out to be – it was a harsh scene for the maiden to endure.

* * *

Their night had been quickly swept away by business matters and happenings regarding the vineyard, which meant that, when Alcina invited her to a garden stroll, it was the first chance to converse they had gotten all evening.

They walked around the eastern part of the estate, leisurely, with the loose goal of making it to the rose garden on the southern side. Covered by an embroidered veil that matched her silky reds – a protection against summer’s early dawns – the maiden could have easily passed as the masked Red Death. The three Doberman hounds, who followed her obediently without the need for a leash, were a lot more reminiscent to Cerberus. Alcina had even teased her about an appalling lack of pomegranate offerings, to which the maiden had tenderly replied that she would have been a better fit to Persephone, while the lady of the castle was sure to be Hades.

“Both are the rulers of the Underworld”, Alcina pointed out, continuing the sort of conversation that only people who are very close can understand. They discussed the upcoming grape harvest, the west wing renovations, and how odd a shade Morgana Beneviento had decided to dye her hair.

It was a pleasant escape from the tensions previously endured.

When they took a turn through the southeastern gate, however, they were met with an irritating sight.

The dark wood caravan was the perfect representation of bourgeois elegance – it tattered in-between the tasteful and the gaudy, blending into an aesthetic one could only call befitting to the nouveau riche. A table had been set from its back, displaying a wide variety of trinkets and wares, all put for sale along with the items hung from the opened doors. A gentleman with silver hair sat inside, distracted, blowing out thick clouds of smoke from his lit cigar.

“Good evening, Duke. Still swindling our poor staff out of their hard-earned wages, I see”, greeted Alcina with a cold tone. She gave the pompous man a look of distain.

The merchant was taken aback. He coughed, trying to fan away the smoke as he realized just who had stumbled upon his shop. “Evening, Lady Dimitrescu”, he said with a certain awkwardness, having to crane his neck uncomfortably to address her properly. His eyes darted to the maiden, then down to her famous hounds, which did not smooth over any creases. “ _Uh_ , Mrs. Dimitrescu”.

_Countess_ , she corrected mentally, though whatever satisfaction she got from her full title was rarely worth the confusion over the repetition. The term itself neither gave nor took from her power.

_She did rather enjoy being referred by it, nevertheless, that one time she had been ravished over the late count’s grave._

The maiden gave him a curt nod, browsing the products for sale with a tamed curiosity.

Alcina, who had a much lower tolerance for senseless baubles, stared at the merchant with crossed arms. “Do you at least disclaim that those dreadful garlic cloves do absolutely nothing against our kind? Or should my court expect to see you on trial for fraud in the near future?”, she provoked, showcasing how sharp her sarcasm truly was.

The man gave a semi-polite shrug, unphased by the hostility.

“I tell them as it is, madam. Garlic to ward off the evil spirits. Who they interpret that to be is their sin, not mine.”

“Fair enough, I suppose”, she hissed. “I do fell morally obligated _– by my position, of course, and not by personal attachment –_ to inform you that graverobbing on my lands is still considered a capital offense.”

The man raised his hands in an apologetic manner, same as a messenger trying not to get shot by the enemy lines, but behind his professionalism lay a certain amusement at the notion.

“My lady, I wait for the day one of your men catch me with a shovel in hand”, he defended. “Hell, if they ever do, I shall politely thank you as you bring down the sword.”

He finished his thought by taking another drag at his cigar. Alcina scrunched her nose but provided no further comment.

“I am more concerned as to why anyone would even bother going to such lengths to acquire this clutter”, began the maiden, tracing a rather insipid pistol with her gloved fingertip. “Although…”

She picked up a nondescript leatherbound journal. It was well-used, judging by the broken spine, but by no means old. Flickering through the pages with prospective interest, she came across detailed notes of a medical nature, complete with labeled diagrams and precise calculations. Something about a virus, though anything more telling would require her to take the time to make out the encrypted writing.

“Should we watch out for a plague?”, the maiden questioned, raising the journal to the merchant’s line of sight.

“That was from the new stable hand”, he explained with a healthy measure of disinterest. “He wanted to buy something for his paramour but didn’t have any change. Poor man was so lovestruck I ended up striking him a deal. That is his deposit.”

Alcina immediately caught his slip.

“A man?”

Her narrow gaze could have slit the mortal’s carotid. He merely nodded.

“We do not employ any man in the stables”, she added as a disguised warning. To threaten to rip out his left eye for withholding information would have escalated the situation much too quickly, she knew, yet it made it no easier to have to restrain herself to the idiot’s boorish protocols.

“He was lying through his teeth, sure. Still, I would not want to pry.”

Though the merchant spilled no useful information, he did gesture to the coin purse strapped to his belt.

In a perfect world, Alcina thought, she would have strung him up by his ankles and let him hemorrhage from the heightened blood pressure to his brain, or maybe tossed him over the drawbridge to be eaten alive by crocodiles, as pirate queens often did to crooks in children’s fables.

Yet the brave, wild world was a work in progress, which meant that, as she reached into the pocket of her dress, she could only make plans for all the awful tortures she would subject him to.

“But?”, Alcina pressured through gritted teeth, tossing the merchant a shiny gold coin. That seemed to loosen his tongue.

“But he comes around every few days to see one of the girls. Kitchen staff, copper hair… Magdalena or something like that. You could probably catch them fornicating around the well if you went out for a walk a bit earlier”.

The maiden grimaced, “I think we would rather not.”

Similarly displeased, Alcina dismissed the entire interaction as a waste of her money, turning to look at the blooming lilies instead.

If only screaming at flowers made them grow more beautiful.

“Well, we cannot deprive our staff of social interaction”, said the maiden after having sensed that nothing productive would come of the exchange, if not perhaps for an irritated wife. “She does not work upstairs, in any case, and we will eventually need new helpers to replace this set.”

The merchant, despite being visibly uncomfortable by what the maiden had implied, gave a brief acknowledgement.

“I’ll bring out some wedding rings, then.”

“You do that, Duke. How much?”

Noticing that the maiden was referring to the journal, Alcina immediately cast her a look of indignation – furrowed eyebrows and crossed arms included.

“Dearest, you cannot possibly intend to purchase some brute’s nonsensical scribbles.”

Her response was to give a slow, exaggerated nod. The sort of taunt whose only purpose was to try her composure, ticklish as peacock feathers being run over warm, receptive skin.

“You’ll have to outbid the owner. With all due respect, madam, I doubt you’d be willing to pay the price”, retorted the merchant.

The maiden bared her teeth, her gaze clouded over by a strange peril. “We can buy your entire wagon with a fraction of this month’s winery revenues. Try again.”

He was not particularly fond of being threatened into making a sale, the Duke. With that said, business was business, and business with one of the four master puppeteers of the vast village lands was not to be underestimated, much less denied.

“One of the puppies”, said the merchant after a pensive beat.

The maiden looked down at her loyal hounds. All three sat in a straight line, awaiting her command, endearing faith painted over their sharp teeth and focused eyes. She weighed the price on a mental scale. There were sixteen other trained dogs kept in the menagerie – these three just happened to be the ones the servants had not yet taken on a walk – and only a latch to undo if she ever wanted more. None was less lethal than its sibling. All excelled at ripping apart her troubles.

“Will you think me cruel?”, the maiden asked to Alcina. Her tone might have been sweet, nearly innocent, but the Lady knew that as her personal shorthand to mischief.

“I will think you mad.”

The maiden smiled, delighted, “I can work with that”. She then spoke to the merchant, “Will you respect its dietary restrictions? Love and care for it as your own?”

The man looked at the both of them, skeptic.

“My definition of love isn’t anything like what you folk believe. But, yes, I can feed it some pig blood from time to time.”

“Once a month, at the very least, it must be human. I’m certain you can figure something out with that shovel.”

The news seemed to deflate his enthusiasm a bit. Nevertheless, he agreed. “Sold.”

“Well, in that case, take your pick.”

The maiden gestured to the animals. Taking a pause to fully consider his options, the merchant eventually picked the smallest dog, who had its tongue poking out of its mouth. _Cornelius_ , the maiden knew without having to glance at its collar. She bent to the animal’s level, running a kind hand over its short, black fur. Pleased by the affection, it leaned into her touch and wagged what remained of its docked tail.

Though the animal had killed many, she reached around its neck with the trust better warranted to a newborn pup, unclasping the collar with a flick of her digits. “Thank you for your service”, she told it lovingly.

With a snap of her fingers, the animal jumped over the display and into the caravan, sitting beside its new master. The maiden held the journal underneath her arm, completing the purchase.

“I appreciate your patronage, my ladies”, said the merchant, overly pleased with the trade. Alcina rolled her eyes and placed a firm hand on the maiden’s shoulder to try and steer them back into the romantic walk she had planned. A more sensible person would have found the act an unnecessary display of possessiveness, but the maiden simply thought it charming.

“Shall we?”, she said to Alcina, presenting her hand.

On they went to the rose gardens and back to the meaningless, heartwarming bickering of domesticity. Before they were too far away, however, the maiden thought of the hound that had been left behind.

To relinquish control over it was as simple as cutting a stretched thread.

_Snip_ , and the bond was gone.

_“Easy, boy! Easy, boy! Ouch!”_ , came the muffled screams from a ways away, accompanied by the growling of a feral creature who had never been truly tamed – only thralled.

* * *

_July 18 th, 1978._

It was still early in the morning when a soft knocking was heard from outside the master bedroom’s doors.

Having just bathed, Alcina expected it to be their ladies’ maid coming in with a fresh bottle, or the head of staff inquiring about daytime preparations before they could rest. It was neither of them. Instead, she was surprised to see her youngest on the other side of the entrance, looking completely distraught.

“Daniela, whatever is the matter?”

The maiden, who had been writing notes from the desk at the end of the room, lifted her eyes from her papers once she heard the concern that dripped from Alcina’s words.

“Mother, I killed my pet. I think”, Daniela confessed, her voice uncharacteristically unsure. “Her skin has turned blue, at the extremities, and she kept vomiting and shaking before she collapsed.”

It was most unusual to have her come to them at such an hour, even more so to discuss something as unimportant as a perished meal. Her gaze kept darting all around her, as though she expected for a hidden creature to attack from the shadows, and the tiniest of sounds managed to startle her, pointing to what could only be a guilty conscience.

Scared as a baby bird with a broken wing.

Sensing that something was out of place, Alcina motioned for her to come in.

“Well, darling, that really should not come as a surprise. You know how many of them we go through, in any given month”, Alcina continued, taking a seat on the armchair so that she could watch her daughter more closely. Placing down her pen, the maiden turned to do the same, noticing how Daniela’s breaths were labored.

“Yes, but…”

There was a clear conflict in her mind. Daniela refused to come further into the room – she wrapped her arms around herself and stood by the door, pale as a ghost.

Leaning forward, Alcina pressed, “What is it?”

“ _I didn’t mean to, mother. Not this time_.”

Her composure broke with the immediacy of dropping a lit match into a barrel of gunpowder. She sobbed aloud, covering her contorted face with her hands, and as the cries poured out from her disarmingly small frame, the sounds began building up into unrestrained, deep wails. If an outsider were to hear her, they would have certainly thought one of her limbs had been ripped out – that someone or something was inflicting aggravated damage upon a young, vulnerable girl, with no visible intent to stop. When, in reality, all the pain had been gifted by herself.

Such a loss of control was most unusual. So much so, in fact, that Alcina was taken aback by how miserable her daughter appeared to be.

“Daniela, you have seen your share of death. How can it bother you so suddenly?”

“ _She was not supposed to die. Not yet, but I fucked up the dose”_ , came her sob, followed by another. She dropped to the floor, kneeling next to the armchair and hiding her face against the soft fabric of Alcina’s nightgown. The maiden, afraid of meddling where she was unwanted, tensed in her role as the audience.

“Darling”, said Alcina, softly. Her long nails ran through her daughter’s hair, soothing her back to quiet tears. “This is no problem at all. There are many others for you to pick from – you’ll forget her soon enough.”

Daniela flinched away as if electrocuted.

“You are not understanding me.”

The maiden’s eyes met hers, then, and in their greenness she saw a silent request for help.

Carefully, the maiden joined the scene, taking on the maternal role she never imagined she would one day have. She hovered, just within reach, hands placed on the back of the armchair.

Her presence managed to stabilize Alcina, who carried on with measured patience, “Explain it to me, then.”

“ _Hurts_. Mother, it hurts.”

The genuine agony in the faltering of her words felt like a punch to the guts.

“Oh, sweet thing.”

Alcina brought her closer, wrapping her arms her daughter’s shoulders and pressing her cheek to the top of her head – curling around her frame as though it were possible to physically shield her from the compulsion tearing into her mind.

_“Forgive me. Forgive me, please.”_

That plead. That one, dammed plead the mortal that survived in them always fell victim to, one day or another. Gradually and steadily, the maiden began to realize that a combination of events had led up to the attack. The grieving came from a beloved pet’s death, yes, but it really could have been caused by something as plain as chipping a pretty teacup or misplacing a favorite book. Frustrations and disappointments augmented by the strain of the long days, by Mother Miranda’s requests, and by the woes of immortality.

All of it was fresh blood to a starving predator.

“You have done nothing wrong. Nothing, you understand?”, reassured Alcina.

To them, the only sense of morality that mattered was that forged by the family. The rest was trivial fodder.

Still, Daniela insisted, “Yes, I have”.

Her form faltered beneath their protection. Her body, once material and solid, flickered into a cloud of insects, then reformed into a semi-solid mass indicative of her emotional turmoil. Not a sight for those of weak stomachs, but to creatures like them, so acclimated to horridness and beasts taking flesh, the unfocused gaze of Daniela’s eyes was the only panic-inducing feature.

There were too many candles in an enclosed space for any moth to be safe, and frenzy was a hard thing to come back from.

“Dani!”, called Alcina, trying to take hold of her wrists as they decomposed and recomposed.

Fearing the strain on her body would be too great, the maiden swiftly rushed to her side. She held her cheeks between her palms, feeling the dampness of her tears over the gelid, cadaverous skin. If the mortal had been high on morphine for a week, perhaps even two, then chances were that Daniela had gone without truly feeding for just as long.

It eroded her, the hunger, both mentally and physically.

“Dani. Look at me, Daniela. Look at my eyes.”

To restore an artwork too damaged, conservators often have no other choice but to strip away the old varnish and reapply the flaking paint found beneath.

“Lister to her, darling”, encouraged Alcina, caught up in trying to hold the fretting girl in place.

“Look at me.”

Her gazes crossed but for a second, yet the maiden somehow transformed it into enough time to gently apply the solvent over the peeling surfaces of her mind, carving a path so that she may slip in.

She knew it to be an invasive act – to intervene with another’s consciousness – but she did not feel guilty for it. Guilt was for insolent idiots trying to influence matters above their rank, tempting fate by calling upon things they did not understand, while this was well within her duty.

Their duty, Alcina had once instructed, to protect their charges from their own hand. 

“Now, relax”, the maiden attempted to sooth, and Daniela whimpered.

_“It hurts.”_

She felt it in her own skin, now. A sharp, perpetrating sting, akin to dunking a wounded limb inside a pool of alcohol.

_Dear God – it did hurt._

“I know, love. I can feel it, too. I’ll have to put you to sleep now, alright?”

They had gone through a similar scene before, seven or so years back. The maiden could not recall what the exact ritual had been, nor the purpose behind it – only that Daniela was the one tasked to retrieve the body of a drowned child from Moreau’s reservoir and bring it to the altar, so they could remove the bloated, gelatinous heart. A meaty main course for a picky goddess. Even though decay was as commonplace in their lives as dust was to an old library, it awakened some long-buried memory of mortality in the vampire, and the outburst that followed was of such magnitude that only induced rest had managed to calm her down.

_“No, no, no – please.”_

_What else were they to do?_

_Lodge a stake through her heart. That was what she did before the maiden had come along._

The gentleness in Alcina’s voice bled into a command, “You are going to hurt yourself. Let her, darling.”

“Come now”, urged the maiden, untangling all those knots in her twisted, convoluted mind.

Perhaps it was only her imagination which conjured up such vivid imagery, but she could very nearly picture it all – her figure marching into the room to drag away the gnarling panther from the mangled neck of humanity, scolding it like one does to an unruly child.

In the real world, Daniela went limp, her face falling once again into her mother’s lap.

Alcina let out a long sigh of relief.

“Yes, like that. Tucked in, safe and sound.”

Her voice, low and strained, carried a bitterness in it.

Feeling as though she had been thrown in the snow and had water poured all over her naked, trembling body, the maiden allowed herself to lay on the ground, bringing her sweat-covered legs to her torso.

“Bloody hell”, she blurted out.

She could already feel the migraine coming.

“Are you alright?”

Love made how concerned she was seem like the greatest crime.

The maiden stood, slowly, and ran a shaking hand through her damp hair. “Yes. Her mind was just… So dark. It was like jumping straight into a black hole.”

They were silent for a long while, after that. Alcina brought sleeping Daniela to their bed with ease, bringing the thick covers over her frame as if she did it every night, their ancientness an insignificant detail in a page full of familiarity. After, she sat on the armchair and opened a fresh pack of cigarettes. She need not ask the maiden to bring her the holder, nor the lighter, for she did so almost automatically, lighting one for herself and another for her wife.

The silence survived until the pack was empty, and the air inside the room had taken a thickness sure to suffocate anyone whose lungs actually dealt with oxygen and carbon dioxide exchanges.

“I cannot imagine why she would react so strongly because of livestock”, Alcina finally said, breaking away from her thoughts. Sadness could be seen in the curl of her mouth. The maiden took another drag.

“Cattle or not, these are the only people she interacts with, other than us. We can’t blame her for becoming attached.”

Having smoked the cigarette to its butt, Alcina put it out in the ash tray. Her painted nails tapped against the crystal material.

“I do not. Heavens know I have tried to teach them to care for their thralls. But, dearest, it is a fine balance between encouraging gentleness and leaving them vulnerable to the worst kinds of heartbreak.”

“Does love always end in heartbreak?”, the maiden questioned, oddly exposed.

“It ends with covetousness left unfulfilled”, concluded Alcina after a beat. She reached out for her glass, which still contained a couple of sips’ worth of lukewarm, clotting blood. She pushed away the film that had formed on the drink’s surface with a displeased scorn. “Had she asked for permission to turn the poor mortal I would not have objected. I have told her this before, actually, when she got obsessed with that squirmy valet. Company is… Well, I am not a hypocrite to call it unimportant, and certainly take no offense in her wishing to expand her social circles. Living in Mother Miranda’s glass bubble is _stifling_ , to put it mildly.”

Finishing off the disappointing drink, she continued, “Instead, she allowed herself to be torn between her two natures, and in that miscommunication, death managed to slip past.”

The maiden sunk back against her seat, casting a look at the sleeping vampire to her left.

“Embracing a human means wrecking their fragility. Daniela would not have accepted that.”

“Sweet, foolish child”, she sighed. Her gold eyes fell on the maiden, and it was like she was staring straight into her soul. “Life takes all things which are left unclaimed.”

Once she had questioned Alcina why she had offered her a choice, twenty years back.

Why dare gamble with the possibility of letting her soulmate slip through her fingers, straight into death, when she could have simply taken her from the start?

The answer had been telling – _“I had to have you choose me, dearest, so that I may choose for you, thereafter.”_

“Should I wake her?”, Alcina asked. The night had been a tiresome one, no doubt, and even monsters needed their dreams.

The maiden shook her head as she rose from her seat.

“No, let her sleep here.”

She offered Alcina her hand and saw how a small smile graced her blood-red lips.

“Good idea.”

Their love turned many heads. Some would have called it a power imbalance. Others would scream at it in distrust, going as far as to viciously recoil from the toxicity that they saw in their relationship, convincing themselves that what they witnessed was a callous mistress with a canary kept in a gilded cage. A doll to be posed on a shelf. A pet, as her nickname suggested.

Only it was an illusion.

Sure, the Lady of the castle had been the one to teach her how to lie, how to bite, and how to kill. There was a level in mimicking in all these actions which, prior to her death, had constituted the greatest taboos of her society. After all, with how they were so rarely away from one another, it would be impossible for their habits not to rub off. Being her lover did not prohibit her from also being a mentor, a position that, for better or for worse, came with an inherent authority.

And any could see that the Lady reveled in her authority. She could very well tell her where to stand, pick the shade and fabric of her clothes, or even call her a _good girl_ and instruct her to stay still – and the maiden would go through it all, with a smile, only so that it may please her.

Pliant. Passive. Submissive.

They would call her that.

At such fools the maiden could only laugh. Because what these fools could not see, much less deign to comprehend, was that it only took her one smile.

One word, one breath, one sigh.

One piece of her to unravel Alcina in her entirety - making them perfectly equal.

Laying in their bed, their youngest sound asleep between them, dozing through the long sunlight was an easy thing to do.

The maiden had nearly drifted into slumber when she heard Alcina’s whisper, quiet and mournful.

“I beg of you – do not let yourself be destroyed. Your end will be my end, otherwise.”

* * *

_October 23 rd, 1978._

Thunder cracked its way through the stillness of the early night. The storm had long settled over the castle grounds – its rain tamed into gentle droplets, trickling over cobble and stone, running down the stained-glass windows with the sort of despondency better suited to ghost stories. And yet, though the estate was the grave of many, and was sure welcome even more souls unfortunate enough to stumble upon it, there were no spirits to wander its halls. No wailing banshees or fretting poltergeists - never mind what the locals tattled.

Castle Dimitrescu was not home to ghost stories. Only horror ones.

That too, somehow, was a trait simple to ignore, during stormy nights dedicated to opening its doors to all fellow masters of fate.

“Knight to E-six”, announced Heisenberg, moving the black piece to its designated house. The melody from the piano created a comforting background to the family meeting, a feeling that ought to be expected from a tightly knit clan such as theirs. The low snicker emitted by the head of the Beneviento, on the other hand, was anything except comforting.

“Pawn takes”, replied Alcina from the other side of the drawing room. Feeling no need to sit at the board, she simply stated her plays aloud and trusted that her brother would be honest in not tampering with the layout while her eyes were focused somewhere else. Heisenberg clicked his tongue in frustration.

“ _Damn_. Bishop to B-five.”

She barely concealed her smile by reaching out to trace the diamond choker worn by the woman at her side. “Queen takes, again. Mate.”

A beat of silence endured as Heisenberg realized that, somewhere along the way, his entire logic had been deconstructed. That he had been left with nothing – except a king to be moved to the only free diagonal. Like an old house torn apart overnight, brick by brick, until the owner suddenly awoke in an empty plot of land.

“Uh… _Shit”_ , he cussed, scratching his head.

The evening had shaped up to be an entertaining one. There was something extraordinary in witnessing all these dignified power figures talking circles around one another, the maiden thought, all while raising cups filled with the best of the decade’s harvests and laughing loudly at their youngest sibling’s misery. Part of it was pretend, she was sure, but an equally significant portion of it felt genuine.

She did suppose that, once one reached a certain amount of influence, even the most dangerous of political disputes amounted to nothing more than a recreational game.

“Please, do take your time”, chuckled Alcina. Her wicked delight was left on display.

The head of the Beneviento crossed the room with deliberately slow paces, glass raised as though ready to take a sip. “Give up, little brother. Nobody beats dear Lina at her own game.”

Dr. Moreau let out a strained laugh without looking up from their book.

Alcina rose, then, walking up to the chessboard with hands resting at her hips.

“He certainly put up a valiant fight”, she said. Though her tone bore striking resemblance to that of someone trying to keep another from feeling too bad, the maiden identified her intention as exactly the opposite – that is, to rub salt on an open wound.

Heisenberg sighed, heavy and tired, and finished what was left of his drink with a single swig. “Have mercy”, he croaked, face twisted in a grimace from the strong alcohol running down his esophagus.

The other sister did not let it up. “Oh, she most certainly won’t. Remember that time some poor Ottoman troops marched through our northern borders? Not a bone left behind.”

Looking at the board for the first time since the match had started, Alcina was happy to see that all pieces matched their location in her mental map of the game. The maiden watched as she sat down and crossed her legs, hand hovering over her knight.

“Those soldiers knew what the risks were when they volunteered to go to the fronts. What I did to His Majesty the King, on the other hand…”, Alcina began in sadistic amusement. Then, before any of her siblings had a chance to process her intentions, she plucked her queen from the front lines and moved her cross the board, placing the entire set of enemy pieces into a chokehold. “Now, that was merciless. Checkmate.”

Heisenberg lifted his hands in defeat.

“How much did he owe you, in the end?”, asked the maiden, who had only heard the story in fragments.

“Enough to turn me petty.”

Alcina gazed back at her wife. She had sunk against the cushions and tucked her legs beneath herself, which would have been a terrible breach in decorum were it not for the charming way in which the sleek scarlet fabric of her skirt pooled around her form. In her eyes was that all-knowing intensity that only matured over the years. It was then Alcina decided she would have another portrait commissioned, one with her posing exactly like that.

No – better yet, she would paint it herself. 

“But you have always been petty, sister, much to Mother Miranda’s chagrin”, mused Beneviento, dropping onto the fireside chair in a tornado of feathers and black robes. “Speaking of which – Countess?”

“Yes?”, replied the maiden.

The other leaders were yet to refer to her by name.

The energy of the room shifted as she spoke – from clear waterfalls to murky, stagnant swamp water.

“What on Earth does she keep calling on you for? My pupils must have escorted you her way three times this month alone.”

The maiden had hoped they would not bring it up. Though remorse was something she rarely came across, these days, the tasks that were asked of her were not noble, nor kind, nor ones she derived any sort of satisfaction from. She paused for a moment, fixing her clothes as she tried to find a non-abrasive way to structure her explanation.

“I – I _ensure_ both parties cooperate with the ritual. Keeps matters from getting messy and… Well, it is better if they _think_ they are enjoying it.”

Better to pass it off as an occurrence of little importance.

“Faster too, I am sure”, quipped Heisenberg, pouring himself another glass of the traditional cognac he had asked one of the maids to bring up.

To keep herself from shuddering, Alcina started fidgeting with her pearl earring. “First pregnant women, now couples. _Breeding them like farm animals_ \- I cannot fathom how low we have sunk.”

There was a moment of shared discomfort before Heisenberg continued with his tone thickened by the liquor.

“And the results, Moreau?”

Once again, the doctor did not bother looking away from their book.

“Inconclusive, for the moment. Most of the subjects we have studied so far were stillborn, several of them premature, though there were a few spontaneous abortions recorded. Yes – quite a few, in fact. _Most intriguing_. I have scheduled an autopsy of selected specimens to try and get a better picture.”

The maiden could swear her wife’s pale complexion had taken on a green tinge.

“Do let us know how that turns out. I, for one, am sick of newborns.”

“What is in that vermouth glass, then?”, immediately teased the younger sister, who had seen and done much worse to even think about being queasy around such matters. The doctor only nodded.

“You are all despicable.”

“And you have fleas. Sit down, Heisenberg.”

He did not reply straight away. Instead, he finished his second drink, followed immediately by another, and if the maiden did not know better than to offend, she would have offered him the bottle to take home, seen as how he liked it so much. As he pushed up his tinted spectacles with a knuckle, his skin covered by a sheet of sweat, a hint of disappointment could be found in his voice. 

“Actually, I think it is time for me to head on my way. Full moon certainly does not help my nerves.”

At that, Dr. Moreau finally moved more than an inch, closing the book with a swift motion.

“Spot on, little brother! Truly a feat of observation! Wouldn’t want to be here when _she_ realizes she was not invited to the family reunion.”

_Right, there was that option to consider._

The music came to a gentle halt. Having spent most of the event gathered around the piano and dodging dull conversation, the three Dimitrescu daughters turned to face the remainder of the clan, their expressions ranging from _“Please do stay”_ and _“Leave at once”_.

“Good point. Shall we adjourn?”, inquired Beneviento with a strange inflection to her raspy voice.

“Yes, that seems like the wise decision”, Alcina agreed. She rose from her seat with poised elegance and offered those present a smile. “Thank you all for coming. Girls, see our esteemed guests to the front door, yes?”

Each daughter dutifully picked a head of the household to lead downstairs. Only a handful of servants had been privy to the fact that the gathering would be taking place - and all were told explicitly to take that knowledge to the grave - so it was important to keep the discretion as the invitees made their way through the darkened hallways. Goodbyes were exchanged politely, if not a bit callously. Heisenberg was the only one to linger behind for longer than a minute.

“We appreciate the hospitality, Lina”. Turning to the maiden, he tipped his hat. “Countess.”

“Safe travels”, the maiden said with a light wave.

And then, without pomp nor circumstance, there were only two.

“Tired?”, questioned the maiden as Alcina lazily walked towards the sofa and laid down upon it, dramatic as Sappho had been when she heard a woman’s laugh from across the room.

“No, pet. Mommy just needs a stiffer drink.”

“ _Hmn_. Leave it to me.”

With mirth the maiden strutted to the decanter and fixed her the usual. The dark liquid rippled when she dropped the candied orange peel into it. The scent was difficult to describe, given how mortal perceptions of smell and taste varied drastically from what their condition allowed them to sense, though the word _honeyed_ came to mind. Virgin blood did rather well to soothe a sweet tooth, she found. Glass balanced in one hand, the maiden picked up the leatherbound journal from where she had left it and secured it underneath her arm, kicking off her red-soled heels as she returned.

Alcina took the offered glass with a polite smile, however her eyebrow soon raised in skepticism when she noticed the other item the maiden had brought with her. “Still trying to make sense of that pauper’s scribbles?”.

“Unfortunately, yes”, sighed the maiden, pressing so close as she sat down that Alcina had no other choice than to let her cuddle up to her, arm stretching over her form on the back of the seat’s frame. “I would have cracked the code by now, were the annotations consistent, but the author seems to purposefully switch between dialects every now and then. I’d wager they were paranoid these notes made it to the wrong hands.”

“Mortals - they’re obsessed with speaking in riddles these past years. I find it almost arrogant”, Alcina mocked, to which the maiden nodded in agreement.

“Their codes are a bitch to decrypt, that much is certain. Still, I’m too invested to give up now, even if I am sure that the contents will be disappointing.”

She held up the journal so that both of them could look at it. The pages were covered margin-to-margin with small, printed symbols, the degree of precision of the handwriting so high that it could have passed as the product of a typing machine. No space on the paper had been left unoccupied – the notes were so cramped, one would have thought somebody had tried to smuggle nuclear access codes across the border with room for only one book in their suitcase. The schematics of viral RNA, drawn by hand, were clearly at the edge of Biology advancements.

“He must have stolen it from someone”, Alcina voiced what was the most probable conclusion. After all, there was no way a village rascal – one who had gone behind the head of staff’s back to fuck one of the scullery maids, at that - could afford such a level of education, much less dare leave this sort of record behind as a deposit for a lover’s trinket.

The mystery regarding the author made her curious. “May I?”

Lips twitching upwards, the maiden closed the journal and held it closer to her chest, almost as if protecting it.

“Nonsensical doodles, you said?”

Her teasing was met with pitch-black darkness, like the last candle snuffed in an empty shrine.

“Act like a brat and I will treat you like one.”

Playing up the shocked expression of a damsel in distress was part of the fun, but the lateness of the hour made the maiden concede faster than she typically would.

“I realize I should invite the in-laws more frequently. Your rotten moods are most charming”, she nonchalantly said as she passed the journal to Alcina. “Here. Work your magic.”

She took her time flicking through the pages, stopping in intermittent intervals to nurse her drink or to run her fingers through the maiden’s hair, which had come half-undone sometime during their shared peace. This went on for a while – three quarters of an hour, at the very least. The maiden had been lured to enjoyable daydreams by the slow, rhythmic pace of her caresses, meaning that when her touch suddenly halted, she was not immediately aware of it.

“Curious”, muttered Alcina, eyes fixed on the page in front of her.

“What?”

The maiden lifted her head to see where her manicured nail pressed against the paper, leaving a dent in the material that could very easily become a tear.

“This line – _here_ – almost looks like your name.”

Her eyes ran over the symbols once, without much understanding. Then a second time and a quarter of the way into a third, but she stopped herself before she could finish reading it again.

“I cannot see what you mean”, the maiden admitted, confusion tricking its way into her expression in a way that was unbecoming to her naivety.

_That had not been her name for nearly twenty-five years._

Swiftly overtaken by boredom, Alcina tossed the journal aside. “Must be a trick of the mind.”

_Even before then, she could count in one hand the number of times she had signed it in full, taking on both her father’s and her mother’s surnames._

“Right. Must be”, she dismissed a bit too harshly, paying no mind to how the pages crumpled from the way they had been carelessly thrown against the sofa upholstery. The maiden shook her head as if resurfacing from a daze. “Changing the subject a bit – do you have any plans for that empty study in the east wing? The one with the green wallpaper?”

Alcina had begun to fondle the hooks of the maiden’s gown. “Not exactly. Why?”

She knew the way she leaned into the touch would be distracting.

“Well, since I have taken an interest in medicine as of late… I just thought you might prefer it if I kept all those tomes separate from our leisure readings.”

_And away from prying eyes._

“Oh, dearest, you needn’t even ask.”

The way their lips pressed together, slow and loose, matched well the undertones of her expression.

As she pulled away, however, her mood perked up a bit. “Anyway, shall I ring for the servants to send someone up? That chess match left me itching to break in something new and shiny.”

She drew Alcina’s glass and took a sip of her own.

“I’ll watch”, the maiden announced, licking off the dripped blood from the tip of her thumb.

* * *

She had not rested, that morning, which made getting up at noon to deal with financial advisors a taxing chore to undertake. The only comfort the maiden could find laid in the fact that Alcina would be the one dealing with the thick of the horde, and that she would only need to make an appearance at the meeting with the accountant, scheduled for after sundown. All the better. She needed the free time to sort her own affairs. She would not be able to relax, otherwise.

_Fuck._

_She had to solve this. Had to._

Undereye circles darkened by her tiredness, the maiden turned to the chambermaid who had been fixing the back of her outfit, pretending not to notice how her mouse-like gaze darted nervously over the blue-tinged bruises scattered over the maiden’s neckline.

_She could pass as a corpse, upset as she was._

“Tell me, do we employ a girl called Magdalena in the kitchens? Young, likely red-headed?”

The girl nearly jumped out of her skin. Her movements were clumsy as she did up the buttons, which the maiden attributed to the missing fingernails rather than nervousness from the interaction, though it could have very well been both.

“That has to be Maggie, ma’am”, the chambermaid replied, holding a couple of bobby pins between her teeth before she moved to pinning up her hair.

“Good…”

At the maiden’s slow nod, the chambermaid immediately straightened out her posture, shallowing hard in the process. When she spoke, her low and modest voice took on a higher pitch. She did everything in her power not to meet the maiden’s eyes across the reflection on the mirror.

“Ma’am! I mean – sorry for asking, but is she in trouble? Because that lass is so sweet, I’m sure any of the others would step in if…”

The loyalty of the downstairs staff was something to be marveled at. While their retainers trampled over one another to get to be the one under their attention, painfully addicted to their thrall, and the upstairs maids sabotaged their companions to keep themselves away from their mistresses’ scopes, the servants of the catacombs would take bullets to protect their fellow employees. The contrast was ironically stark. Even her hounds were not so trusting.

“Oh. _No,_ nothing of the sort. The lady of the house has today’s entertainment set aside already”, the maiden reassured her, tying the scarf she had selected with a prim knot. It was wiser to cover the bruises until she had an opportunity to properly heal them, lest those outsiders get the wrong impression. She continued, “I merely wish to speak to her. Could you arrange for it?”

“Of course. Right away, if you would like, ma’am.”

The maid bowed as she stepped away from the mirror.

“Perfect. And – please make sure she is clean before you bring her up, yes? Have Lois give her a bath and a fresh change of clothes. Also, see that she uses the washroom. We do not want any unfortunate accidents.”

“Yes, ma’am”, the maid replied, overly aware that the only way forward was to not overthink these peculiar requests.

The maiden arranged for them to meet at the library. She felt that the room was neutral enough not to put the girl in an uneasy position, and the diffused sunlight that was reflected off the other side of the courtyard was sufficiently mild so that she could stand in it without wishing to claw off her own skin. The atmosphere had to be polite, she thought, if it were to have the correct effect. When the girl did appear at the door, plump and scared and mildly fascinated by the velvet dress Lois had picked from their collection, the maiden even managed to inject some warmth into her voice.

“Maggie, is it?”

“Yes, my lady.”

She gave the girl an up-and-down look, concluding she would not amount to much.

“After Mary Magdalene? The saint?”

“After my aunt, my lady, God rest her soul.”

The maiden hummed at the sudden devotion. The phrase almost sounded wrong, by now, and to think that the world outside still clung to it made her feel nostalgic. “I can tell you are not from here”, she said, making the girl cower in nervous embarrassment.

“My lady?”, the girl asked as if she had committed a faux pas.

The maiden shook her head, bemused.

“God has very little power in these lands, Maggie. And enough with the “my ladies” – makes me feel old. Please, take a seat”. When the girl did not move from her spot, she added with more authority, “Do not be afraid. I just hoped we would talk”.

“I’m sorry. It’s just… There are…”, the girl muttered. This time she seemed to be regretful of some thought or another, an observation that the maiden used to fuel her guess.

“There are stories? Dead seamstresses, leashed maids, gutted gardeners, and other tales of the sort?”

Bowing her head, the girl took a lot of effort to explain. “My mother tells me it is sinful to believe in the occult.”

Maybe it was because she had been taught a similar dogma, back when the idea of death still held an inherent meaning in her mind, but the maiden very quickly began to lose her patience for conducting her business in a subtle manner. Instead, she decided that if the girl worked here, then she was well aware of how they operated, meaning that laying down a trap and telling the girl to step on it was a much more efficient alternative to trying to lure her into the spot with sweet words and calm reassurances.

“And my wife tells me that it is better to have little ladies like you think that we do not bite. Doesn’t mean either of us have to listen.”

The sharpness of her voice made the girl take a step back.

“I think I should…”

_Does not matter what you think._

“Stay”, the maiden commanded, loud and clear, and the girl soon found herself sitting across from her – confused and rather dizzy. “Have you ever read Shakespeare?”

The girl shook her head.

“Pity. _Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs; A madness most discreet, a choking gall, and a preserving sweet._ ”

“Are you in love, my lady?”

_She had wanted her to ask it, with those exact words, for it made for the perfect transition to the topics the maiden planned to broach. The question was at the tip of the girl’s tongue, anyhow._

“I am. The most all-encompassing kind there is”, was her genuine reply. So genuine that it made the girl smile of her own volition, as if she were recollecting some fond memory with a blush upon her cheeks. The maiden pressed, “Are _you_ in love? Do you even know what it is?”

She took a pause before responding, the quietness of her voice revealing the pulsating insecurity beneath her convictions. “I’d like to think so.”

“Tell me his name.”

“Peter”, the girl confessed, half in shame and half in blinded admiration. It seemed that even the rascal’s name brought her pain and, on top of it, well-forbidden pleasure. The scene forced the maiden to hold back a snicker.

“Is he British?”

The girl was taken aback by the inquiry. Her soft features tensed, and in her mind, she was likely questioning whether this was something she was supposed to know, given how long the two of them had been seeing each other. “I don’t know.”

_Excellent. Another dim-witted whore with no observational skills. If this turned out to be a waste of time…_

“I take it he is fond of secrets”, the maiden dryly pointed out. “Well, Maggie, I shall be rather blunt with you. I am not concerned with who you are, nor what your relationship to this Peter is – only what he has been doing in my home.”

“Peter works at the stables. He manages the horses”, the girl stated with the greatest confidence. That was what he had told her, was it not? Surely a man who wrote in code and had more fake identities than a spy would not have lied about something as important as his occupation. Surely.

It brought the maiden joy to break the news to the girl. “He does not, I assure you.”

“I don’t understand.”

_Were all these women really sitting ducks in a pond full of alligators?_

“ _Clearly_ ”, the maiden bit, failing to conceal her annoyance. “Do you at least know where he lives?”

The girl brightened up upon being asked for information she did have. Except that, as she told the maiden what she knew, the implications for her own reputation suddenly came to mind, and the words began to die out in her tongue.

“He rents a room at the inn. I’ve been there a couple of… times.”

The maiden gave her no room to dwell in shame, asking right after, “And has he ever alluded to what brought him to this village?”

The little thing was, at the very least, working really hard to find clues in the stashed away memories relating to her beau. Looking hard at her freckled cheeks, wrinkled from her narrowed eyes, it was possible to visualize the gears turning in her head, and it thrilled the maiden to get the momentum going.

“No. I mean, he mentioned he was an apprentice, once. But he got sent away. Something about how he had to prove he could do his job right.”

“Now we are getting somewhere”, the maiden added, her fingers snapping as if she were trying to command one of her hounds to go for the kill. She crossed the space in a hurry, taking a seat next to the suddenly shaking girl, and in her hastiness, she was hit by a bizarre sensation. The maiden stopped and slowly breathed in. In through the nostrils, hold, and out through the mouth.

_“Oh. Your scent is strange. Like wilting leaves under frozen snow”_ , she disclosed without really meaning to, her mind trying to pull her away from present. She looked directly at the girl, then, and almost felt her stiffen as a board from the invasion of personal space.

She asked, “Are you ill?”, because never had she come across a mortal with such a peculiar scent.

The girl tried to flinch away, sliding across her seat until she was backed up against the sofa’s arm, her lips trembling in denial. “ _No._ No, I can’t be.”

_Put the plan on hold – she simply had to know what this was._

“Allow me”, the maiden requested, pointing to the girl’s left hand. It took a fair amount of convincing – the intangible, mental kind – for the girl to extend out her arm, her limb shuddering like a dandelion caught in a hurricane. The maiden took hold of her hand, much too gently, and reached for the letter opener that had been left aside on the center table. She could very well hear the girl’s doubled heartbeats echoing through the quiet. With the instrument she created a small puncture in the tip of the girl’s index finger – just enough to draw a drop of blood, which she cleaned with her own thumb before licking it off.

_She would rather be caught on her knees than drink directly from the rabble._

“Seems like we have a problem on our hands”, the maiden added after a brief moment of consideration, and her all-knowing smile finally cracked the girl.

“Don’t throw me out! My lady, please!”, she cried out in panic, her hands joining together in her implorations. Her sobs came out heavy and wet, like desperation had been bottled up inside her for a long time, which was more than the reaction the maiden had predicted.

“No need for that. If we fired every woman with child, in a village as small as this, certainly we would run out of staff. Calm down”, she attempted to soothe, pulling the girl to sit back. “ _Calm down_. I knew you were expecting the moment you walked in. Things of this nature cling to the air like sprayed perfume”. 

The girl’s eyes widened, and she looked down at herself as though she was about to be sick. Deciding to finally grant her some space, the maiden stood up and walked towards one of the desks, producing a small notepad and a pen to write on it from one of the drawers.

“That said, there is something else wrong with you, and I have a suspicion as to what exactly it may be”, she said as she filled out the paper with instructions, then signed it off with her name.

“Take this”. She handed the note to the girl. “Show it to the family physician and he will sort out your predicament. Or, in the off chance that you decide to keep it – which you are welcome to, if that is your wish – then he will ensure that everything is alright and introduce you to one of the local midwives.”

Rather than thank her, the girl stared at the maiden like she had grown a second head.

“I’ll cover the costs, whatever option you pick”, she added, wondering if that was not painfully clear.

The girl did not shower her with gratitude. Instead, she frowned, and when she next spoke it was like she was a different person altogether. “But?”

_Ha! Her initial judgment proved inaccurate._

“You are smarter than you let on. I appreciate that”, the maiden added after fending off her surprise. “But you will have to do me a favor, in return.”

The girl sighed with the indifference of someone who had been asked a thousand other indiscrete favors.

“What is it?”

She cleaned off her tears, precise, and the gesture had the maiden resting her chin upon her palm.

“You must bring this Peter to me, the next time he comes to visit. Make sure he has the key to his room with him.”

A nod was her only response.

Locked away in her safe tower, the maiden had acquired the unfortunate habit of forgetting what the world outside the castle walls was really like – that it was filled with girls exactly like the one sitting in front of her; girls who had been born with nothing but sharp wits and a desire to survive, who took what they could and gave away only what they must; and who, one way or another, had made it this far.

The maiden had been such a girl, once. The memories of it faded like a photograph held above an open flame.

And yet - she could still recognize that yearning, which inflicted itself upon the girl’s iron-clad perseverance. “Was all of it a lie? Even his love?”

_For him to leave behind that fucking journal only to buy you a pretty necklace? Not a chance._

“No, I have an inkling his love is very real”, the maiden confessed, almost parental. “The true problem is that his obsession with his boss outweighs every other aspect in his life, including his feelings for you.”

The girl snapped her eyes at her.

“His boss? I thought you did not know him.”

_She wondered if this had been a mistake. Yet, sometimes, all she wished for was to talk too much._

“True, I had never heard of a Peter before this very conversation. His employer, Dr. Marcus, is a whole different story. Him I knew much too well.”

She had not spared a thought for the man ever since he had handed her packed suitcase and pointed a furious finger at the front door. Not one, after her anger had been managed. Even when she had been made aware of the contents of her reference letter, once the head of staff had read it aloud during the interview a mere twelve hours before her death, she had paid no mind to the memory of her former employer. His face and name reduced to a blank spot where she could write in whatever backstory most amused her that day.

“My lady…”, the girl began, but she silenced her with a raised hand.

_What a hypocrite he was. Questioning her for disciplining his imps – her job - while he went off to torture children as a means of gathering research data._

“I worked for him, a long time ago. As a governess to his children. It baffles me how life turns in circles.”

_And his poor wife – left painfully alone, prohibited from even straying her eyes from the path ahead. The maiden had only meant to help._

“Your boyfriend’s diary offered me some much needed clarity. His knowledge - I need more of it.”

It was clear that the girl had a fair number of questions. Some of them were sure to be chewing at her insides, her teeth clenched with the strength fitting for a splinter stuck in a festering wound, yet with the skill of an old prodigy she stashed all of them behind a dutiful bow. Those like her could not afford principles.

“Excellent. Now, be on your way. I have other matters to attend”, the maiden quickly dismissed, ignoring that which whispered to her ear ever since she had recognized her own picture in the back of an old newspaper clipping – a missing person advert posted five years after the fact, hidden in the journal’s false cover. “And don’t forget to talk to the physician on your way down.”

Whispers, voices, and so many of them, she could no longer tell them apart from her own.

_Maiden, they said, they are coming for your heart._

“My lady?”, the girl squeaked despite herself, looking over her shoulder by the exit. “You won’t harm him, will you?”

_They will take it for themselves._

It had been ages since she had last cried. Tears of sorrow, that is, not the ones Alcina enjoyed drawing out from her with perfectly crafted motions.

Tears of sorrow, of pain, tears of anger – what stupid things.

Yet, even if she tried to resist them, there they were. Down her cheeks, hot, soaking her scarf.

Her words caught in her throat. She ripped them out.

“Perish the thought. You can keep the dress, by the way.”

Soon she was alone, and alone she stayed for a long time.

Past her blurred vision she saw the sky take on its darker cloak. Cream, pink, violet. She had half the mind to recall the appointment, knowing that she would be late regardless of whether she ran down the halls or strolled along them without a care in the world, though the pain had seduced her into a paralytic torpor. Once she finally dragged herself from her seat, her eyes continued weeping, their salty tears stained red as her corpse exhausted the physiological capabilities it no longer had a need to replicate.

She opted not to feed – she felt like she deserved the hunger.

The maiden walked down into the heart of the castle without recalling that she had ever escaped it. She took the stairs up the main hall, then right, past the dressing room and all the way to the end of the corridor, unlocking the mahogany door and descending the stone stairs two steps at a time. She crossed the small tasting room at the entrance of the cellar, whose record player still had the _Danse Macabre_ vinyl set out from the last time they had updated their catalogue. The maiden found fitting to play it.

She kept moving further down. Down the other set of stairs, around the barrels, then through the circular entrance with the carved marble walls. Finding the doorway to the dungeon unlocked, she wasted no time appreciating the architecture.

The music echoed off the vast space, filling the in-between notes of the melody with eeriness.

She heard someone screaming, too. Muffled cries.

Sweet-tempered laughter mixed in the dissonance.

Death thick in the air.

The man tried to pray, but the metal chains holding him up by the neck made it impossible for him to emit anything other than a wheezing, sloshing groan.

“There you are”, came the greeting that she knew so well.

If fear paired well with love, then hatred had been created to be its pair. The two feelings come to her so naturally, bleeding into one another, that they formed something much grander than the sum of their parts. It could only thrive in the fertile soil of the carcasses of compassion and the meanness of her tongue. 

“I have told you before that it is impolite to keep the lady of the house waiting.”

The maiden approached, seeing how the strangled accountant shook in his restraints. His left eye was missing – a token gifted to Daniela, she was sure, who found eyeballs a more charming toy to kittens than knots of yarn.

“You could have started without me”, she replied, conscious that this was the incorrect thing to say.

_Were it not for the blood bond, tied both ways, they would have ripped each other apart by now._

Alcina laughed, the sound dragging itself up from her chest like a low rumble, which the maiden felt over her own bones.

“Dearest, you know that is not the case. This?”

She stretched her gloved hand to the man’s abdomen, digging her fingers into the soft flesh beneath. The man whimpered, rejecting his fate until the miserable end, but even pretty pain could not make Alcina tear her eyes away from the maiden.

“This is a pastime. Punishment and repayment, yes, but a pastime all the same. And pastimes are meant to be shared.”

Any other day, the maiden would have given into her wishes by now. “ _No”_ was a word unrecognized by her vocabulary when it came to quenching Alcina’s thirst for violence. But the maiden was not yet ready to lick her wounds – she had to dig them deeper, ripping out the fresh scabs, if she were to have any hope of keeping the mortal she once was alive, just a while longer.

Pain was a human thing.

One ought to feed it every now and then.

“He could have just paid up what he owes. He was three children, no? The three of them in indentured servitude covers the debt”, the maiden argued what she thought was a reasonable alternative.

But logic was often boring, and Alcina tossed away boring things like crumpled tissues and unwanted declarations of affection.

Anger, unlike fear, she wore very well.

“I sense that you resent me”, she accused, painted lips curling downwards in a scowl. The accountant’s face had taken on a shade between violet and blue, his unpleasant noises dying into muted moans.

The maiden diverted her gaze, looking at the pile of bones abandoned in the cell across from them. A faint dripping noise endured over the music. “I do. You see, sometimes I am weak. My will falters and suddenly all I can see are the defects around me. I’m too innocent, now, or not enough.”

“They say that innocence died screaming…”, Alcina began, speaking tightly. Blood began to soak through the accountant’s shirt where her grip lodged itself deep enough to tear muscle.

The maiden did not allow herself to be interrupted. “You do know this is wrong, right? That, objectively, we are bad people. Not because we can transfigure into horrendous forms”. She gestured wildly to their victim. _“But because of this.”_

On cue, Alcina extended her claws. They pierced the accountant’s thoracic cavity with ease, spluttering blood and guttural fluid all over the floor, staining the sleeves of her cream dress in the process. Not enough damage to kill, though the infection that was sure to follow would take him within the hour. A horrible death. Even so, Alcina kept her hand upon him, twisting the angle of her wrist until the man hollered.

She only ever stopped when they passed out. 

“…And what a beautiful song it was”, she whispered, a viscous reminder of what it was like to crave her while she remained beyond reach. The gentle wrinkles contouring her features took a deeper tone against the silver-like sheen of her skin, and her eyes, whose gold encompassed all sunlight Apollo could dream to conjure, flickered in the darkness.

“I recognize that I most often am not, but you are lucid to it, aren’t you?”

No longer she looked angry, now only melancholic. Alcina dislodged her claws from her victim, pulling herself away from the carnage and closer to that who she considered her everlasting touchstone. The accountant’s intestines spilled from the botched incision, their stench rancid, but it was a trivial aspect amidst the chaos of their argument. She discarded her ripped gloves with a harsh motion.

“Your sins are mine to bear. _Of course,_ I am lucid to them!”

Her raised tone stung like the cracking of a leather belt. At the same time, her hands, coated in blood, were the most grounding caress in the whole wicked world, as she cradled the maiden’s face in them and made a mess of wiping away her tinged tears. The floors of the dungeons were filthy and damp, yet she kneeled onto them without a second thought, breaking the one difference that insisted on setting them apart.

The maiden took her hands and, though a part of her soul longed for the kill, finally sobbed.

“It’s just… We created our own little universe, yet there exists another just beyond the forest”, she confessed, truly terrified. “An entire universe of people who will look at us not once before destroying everything we have. _We are dragons sitting upon a golden nest, Alcina, with a horde of petty thieves at the cavern entrance_.”

It was the first time, in the maiden’s disarmingly long life, that she had failed to find a solution to her problems. Her fall was far from graceful.

“ _And – And I don’t know how to fix it. But I have to – I have to_.”

_“Look at me.”_

The maiden would have resisted, even if only out of spite, but soon enough Alcina forcefully turned her jaw and pinned her in place, turning all escape routes into dead ends. The act was not meant to leave her powerless – it merely notched away at her pride.

“Stop tearing yourself apart like this.”

She had never seen Alcina so serious. Her natural lilt had been stripped away from her voice, giving way to a growl suited for barking orders at armies on the cusp of waging war. The pearl earrings and silky gowns turned into details out of place.

The maiden opened her mouth, poised to convey all the bloodcurdling laments her past self never had the chance to express, but Alcina silenced her by placing her sticky palm over the maiden’s lips. “No. Listen”, she ordered past clenched teeth.

She took a shaky breath immediately after. Behind her perfected façade, words failed her as well. “Protecting this place – protecting all of you – that is my responsibility. _Mine, alone_.”

Not once she spoke above a murmur.

“Even if you try to hold it all together, even if Mother Miranda expects too much of you, that is not your purpose. I have you, so that you may be loved, and love in return.”

Unlike her sleepy declarations, or her vanity-filled laments, she did not beg. Instead, she called upon those vows taken on the dawn of a winter day, during which the maiden had signed away her name and taken on that of another, drunk and afraid and fallen head over heels.

“ _Do not break my heart_. Not like this.”

Choosing for her, at last.

The maiden pulled away the hand that covered her mouth and placed a kiss upon its palm. Then another, over her bloodied knuckles, and one on the inside of her wrist, where the buttons had left a sliver of discolored skin exposed. The maiden killed her with kisses all the way up her arm, her shoulder, her neck. Finally, her lips, chapped beneath her lipstick.

As the maiden stepped away from the gruesome embrace, she only prayed that it all would be fine.

“Don’t break mine.”

* * *

_[REDACTED], 2022._

In the room with the green wallpaper, protected by three separate locks, Ethan Winters backed away from the archives with the horror of a man who could not trust his own eyes.

This place held documents of all kinds – birth records, marriage certificates, and wills dated to as far back as 1609, all signed under repeated names and identical calligraphy; there were deeds to properties scattered around Europe, accompanied by business credentials and bank statements in a hundred different currencies; but, most important of all, there were medical notes. Volumes upon volumes of handwritten papers filled to the absolute maximum, composed with the vigor of a person whose only purpose must have been studying its contents and recording them for posteriority. The last set had unfortunately been covered by a layer of dried blood.

Ethan had learned the hard way to always read the logs.

Despite his intuition warning him that his time would soon run out, he went through every single one of them. By the end it, the bulk of his wounds had scabbed over, and he could only think about how the Baker incident paled in comparison to whatever the fuck was taking place in that wretched village. He could hardly believe it.

Now, armed with the scientific knowledge to back his claims, Ethan finally understood why they had come after his daughter.

It seemed they had long searched for a child of compatible nature – and Eveline, if the printed out emails were to be trusted, fit the description like a glove.

_Mia had told him to stop being paranoid._

_She had known, did she not?_

He would have preferred to have died in ignorance.

_God help them. God help them all._

* * *

_[JOURNAL ENTRY – PAGE 43]_

22/05/1978: Met with the kitchen girl again. Asked her if there were any rumours about a bloodborne disease afflicting the aristocratic family, but got distracted before she could answer. Will ask again tomorrow.

10/06/1978: Managed to acquire some samples from the upstairs staff. No abnormalities found, though a few of the maids’ bloodwork are compatible with anemia. Could be the local diet – must investigate further. Cough has gotten worse.

12/06/1978: Forwarded my recent observations to Dr. Marcus. No response. Maggie came over to spend the night.

27/06/1978: Finally mapped out all subjects under study. Matrilineal line A has been added to the family tree. Will now begin collection of primary data.

01/07/1978: Maggie arranged a meeting with one of the chambermaids. Subjects are largely nocturnal and exhibit signs of photosensitivity. All seem to possess sadistic tendencies, though the witness refused to elaborate. Local folklore appears to create a bias – must not consider data objective. Asked her to collect biological samples in return of a hefty sum of money.

02/07/1978: If birth records are genuine, subject A-05 estimated at 43 years of age. A-05 was added to the family will under the Dimitrescu surname in 1959. Should look for missing young women within that timeframe.

05/07/1978: Hallucinated. Found matching missing persons ad from 1964 newspaper. Subject A-05’s real name suspected to be [REDACTED].

07/07/1978: Attempted to interrogate the Duke – had to leave one of my notebooks as insurance of my discretion. He firmly believes in the veracity of the birth records. The man must be insane – otherwise this would place subject A-01 at over 400 years of age. Still waiting on the samples. Bought Maggie a necklace. She thinks I look pale.

27/08/1978: Samples received at last. Hair samples from all five subjects. Saliva sample from A-04. Blood sample taken from A-03’s ballet slipper, but fabric glue has rendered it unusable. ~~Traces of cervical fluid retrieved from master bedroom bedsheets.~~

~~Dear God What Am I Doing~~

Will begin analysis at once.

05/10/1978: Finished sample analysis. Too shocked to write.

10/10/1978: Maggie has taken ill and refuses to see me.

15/10/1978: Hallucinated again. Can keep only water down.

24/10/1978: Complied final report. Will forward it to Dr. Marcus’ laboratory tomorrow.

I feel like I am dreaming. I mean, to find another plant-based Progenitor variant so soon after the “t” breakthrough – it is a miracle!

The subjects are the perfect representation of what the Tyrant Project can achieve.

This changes everything. 

25/10/1978: Passed another blood clot, had to postpone shipping the report. Maggie has asked to see me. Must make sure to bring her a copy of my key.

Got the ring - will ask her to marry me after all this is done.

_[END OF ENTRY]_

* * *

_“Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this.”_

― Vita Sackville-West, The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this was not too excessive... 
> 
> Who am I kidding? I know we are all thirsty for that vampiric angst. 
> 
> On a more serious note, I think I should mention that, in addition the final chapter, I also have an epilogue in the works. However, since I intend for it to address canon events, it will only be released after the game has been published. (Fingers crossed my wild headcanons are not too contradictory for that to work.)
> 
> For those who are curious: Dr. Moreau was inspired by the titular character in the novel "The Island of Doctor Moreau", and Morgana Beneviento by the sister sorceress character of the same name in Handel's opera "Alcina". 
> 
> As always, thank you for reading!


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